Measures of Central Tendency and Sensitivity

Question: Which measure of central tendencyis most sensitive to extreme scores —the mean, the median, or the mode? Explain.

Mean, mode and median are the three parameters used to measure central tendency. It is very important to understand how these parameters are calculated to know if these are affected by extreme values.

The median divides the values into two equal halves. One half has all the values which are lower than the median and the other half has all the values which are higher than the median. It can be calculated as under:

1. Sort the values into ascending order.
2. In case of an odd number of values, …

This solution discusses the various measures of central tendency and finds the measure which is most sensitive to extreme scores.