10 12 10 8 16 16 8 12 6 16 12 12 12 10 22 8 20 16 12 14 6 12 18 16 10 8 12 10

Question

Located the mean of all skirts sold. Located the mode off all skirts sold. Assume that the store has completely sold out of stock and staff want to reorder more skirts. Describe which of the above measures of central tendency is the most useful to the staff in this scenario. Why?

Answer 1

Order the dataset:

6 6 8 8 8 8 10 10 10 10 10 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 14 16 16 16 16 16 18 20 22.

The mean is (2(6)+4(8)+5(10)+8(12)+14+5(16)+18+20+22)/28=12.29.

The mode is 12.

The median, mode and mean all give an idea of the central value of the data.

But in this case the mode is best because it gives an actual skirt size, whereas the mean gives a number which doesn’t correspond to an actual skirt size. The store would then most likely reorder size 12.