I use it in class when looking at my student's scores... Often I look at mean, median, and mode to decide to reteach a concept or not.
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It is misleading to use the mean as a descriptor of a data set when the median or mode would be more representative of the data set as a whole.
You use mean when you want to find the average of data. You use median to find the middle of a piece of data, ordered from least to greatest. If there is 2 medians, then find the average of those 2 numbers. You use mode when you are trying to figure out the most common piece of data. There can be more than 1 mode.
The question is how do the mean and median affect the distribution shape. In a normal curve, the mean and median are both in the same point. ( as is the mode) If a distribution is skewed, its tail is either on the right or the left. If a distribution is skewed the median may be a better value to use than the mean since it has less effect on the shape. Also is there are large outliers, the median has less effect and is better to use. So the mean has a bigger effect on the shape many times than the median.
The answer depends on the type of data. The mean or median are useless if the data are qualitative (categoric): only the mode is any use. The median is better than the mean is the data are very skewed.
'cause they were average, not fantastic! It is sometimes stated that the 'mean' means average. This is incorrect if "mean" is taken in the specific sense of "arithmetic mean" as there are different types of averages: the mean, median, and mode. For instance, average house prices almost always use the median value for the average.