A college dean is interested in measuring the research productivity of the seven members of the Psychology department.The dean obtains the number of publications for each faculty member.They are as follows: 5,10,15,15,20,25,and 180.If the dean wants to describe these data,which measure of central tendency would paint a misleading picture of the research productivity of the department?
A)the mean
B)the median
C)the mode
D)the standard deviation

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The mean is sensitive to extreme values or outliers, such as the value of 180 in this data set. Since one faculty member has a much larger publication count than the others, the mean would be greatly influenced by this extreme value and would not be representative of the typical research productivity of the department. The median or mode would be better measures of central tendency in this case. The standard deviation is a measure of variability and is not affected by the presence of outliers.

A College Dean Is Interested in Measuring the Research Productivity