A Canadian political scientist discovers that the number of members of their provincial parliament that a group of voters can name is as follows: 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 35. Upon examination of these scores, the researcher would probably decide to use which measure of the typical value?
A)Mean
B)Median
C)Mode
D)Standard deviation

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The presence of the outlier (35) suggests that using the mean would not be appropriate as it would be heavily influenced by this extreme value. Therefore, the better choice in this scenario is the median, which is not affected by outliers. The mode is also not helpful in this case as there are no repeating values. The standard deviation is a measure of variability and is not relevant for finding the typical value.

A Canadian Political Scientist Discovers That the Number of Members