When your data is symmetric and narrowly spread about it.
Each measure of central tendency has strengths and weaknesses. The mean takes every piece of numeric data and treats them all as equally weighted. Outliers will have equal weight with any other measure. In the long run, when you want to estimate a value that is least different from all values, use the mean. If you want your estimate to be closest to absolutely correct or to be absolutely correct most often, use the mode, and if you want your estimate to be as likely to be above the true value as below, use the median.
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Though mean, median, and mode is central tendency, it is hard to put this into words.For an example:Your average grade in math class is an A. Though, how did you calculate that average? Well, since average means mean, you calculated that average using the method of central tendency, or in this situation, you found the mean.In other words, central tendency is just a method (mean, median and mode) to find the average, middle, and most occurring score or number in a set of data.I hope this helped! ;D~Lovingless
An example of using measures of central tendency is in using mean; an example is using rating system to score a person. Also in median, which is used in subjects such as economics.
When you want the central location of a variable.
The median or mode should be used instead of the mean in distributions with extreme outliers. In such cases, the mean can be a misleading measure of central tendency and the median value or the mode value are typically more accurate measures.
Given that the study manager wants the QC efforts to be focused on selecting outlier values, whose method is a better way of selecting the sample