Suppose we have a data set of the number of car accidents per day in Los Angeles during the year 2013. The data was input into a spreadsheet manually by an assistant at the Department of Transportation. For one day in July 2013, he input that there were 14 car accidents; but there were actually 140 that day. How will this error affect the measures of center for this data?
A)The mean and the median will be lower than they should be.
B)The mean and the median will not be affected by this error.
C)The mean will be lower than it should be, but the median will not be affected.
D)The median will be lower than it should be, but the mean will not be affected.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The mean is sensitive to extreme values or outliers, so inputting 14 instead of 140 will lower the mean. The median, however, is less sensitive to such errors, especially if the dataset is large, because it depends on the middle value(s) when the data is sorted, not on the magnitude of the values.

Suppose We Have a Data Set of the Number of Car