Measuring and describing distributions
The distributions of data found in the wild come in many shapes and sizes. This section will discuss how distributions are measured and which measurements apply to the four types of data. These measurements will provide methods to compare and contrast different distributions. The measurements discussed in this section can be broken into the following categories:
- Central tendency
- Variability
- Shape
These measurements are called descriptive statistics. The descriptive statistics discussed in this section are commonly used in statistical summaries of data.
Measuring central tendency
There are three types of measurement of central tendency:
- Mode
- Median
- Mean
Let’s discuss each one of them.
Mode
The first measurement of central tendency we will discuss is the mode. The mode of a dataset is simply the most commonly occurring instance. Using the machines in the factory as an example (see...
