A friend of yours assigned a code of 1 to "male" and a code of 2 to "female" on the variable gender. Your friend asked the computer to compute the average score on gender. The computer printout contained the following information: mean = 1.38, standard deviation = .432, median = 1.4, and mode = 1.0. What is your friend's problem with the computer information?
A) asking for measures of central tendency on continuous variables
B) asking for measures of central tendency and dispersion on nominal variables
C) asking for the mode and the standard deviation in the same report
D) asking for measures of dispersion on continuous variables

Question

A friend of yours assigned a code of 1 to "male" and a code of 2 to "female" on the variable gender. Your friend asked the computer to compute the average score on gender. The computer printout contained the following information: mean = 1.38, standard deviation = .432, median = 1.4, and mode = 1.0.  What is your friend's problem with the computer information?
A) asking for measures of central tendency on continuous variables
B) asking for measures of central tendency and dispersion on nominal variables
C) asking for the mode and the standard deviation in the same report
D) asking for measures of dispersion on continuous variables

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The problem lies in requesting measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode) and dispersion (standard deviation) for nominal variables (in this case, gender, which is categorized as "male" or "female" with codes 1 and 2). These statistical measures are typically used for interval or ratio data, not for nominal data, which merely categorizes without implying any order or scale.

A Friend of Yours Assigned a Code of 1 to "Male