HELP!! Which is better? Mean or Median?

3vo

New member
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Nov 21, 2013
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1
Hi guys,


I hope someone is able to help, I'm currently stuck on a problem.


I'm having trouble justifying which representation is more accurate for my data; either mean with standard deviation or median with IQR.
I've calculated both averages for the my data, however I was advised by someone that the mean with standard deviation was a better representation. I dont understand how this could be the case as my ogive graph seems to indicate that the distribution is wide and uneven. I was under the impression if distribution is ever uneven, to always use the median over mean as median is not affected by outliers.


Why in this case would the mean be better than the median? Or is median better representation, if so why?
My mean value was 8.6 with a standard deviation of 14.5 whilst the median was 3.44 with IQR of 9.5.

TBH I dont know what to do with the standard deviation and IQR values. I understand they are measures of spread, but what do they mean to the data? Would appreciate if anyone could also explain what I do with them so I can justify which would be the better representation.


I have attached a copy of my data table and ogive graph if that helps.


Any advice given would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.


P.s. Please correct me if i've done my ogive graph wrong, first real attempt at it.


photo 1.jpgphoto 2.jpgphoto 3.jpg
 
Hi guys,


I hope someone is able to help, I'm currently stuck on a problem.


I'm having trouble justifying which representation is more accurate for my data; either mean with standard deviation or median with IQR.
I've calculated both averages for the my data, however I was advised by someone that the mean with standard deviation was a better representation. I dont understand how this could be the case as my ogive graph seems to indicate that the distribution is wide and uneven. I was under the impression if distribution is ever uneven, to always use the median over mean as median is not affected by outliers.


Why in this case would the mean be better than the median? Or is median better representation, if so why?
My mean value was 8.6 with a standard deviation of 14.5 whilst the median was 3.44 with IQR of 9.5.

TBH I dont know what to do with the standard deviation and IQR values. I understand they are measures of spread, but what do they mean to the data? Would appreciate if anyone could also explain what I do with them so I can justify which would be the better representation.


I have attached a copy of my data table and ogive graph if that helps.


Any advice given would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.


P.s. Please correct me if i've done my ogive graph wrong, first real attempt at it.


View attachment 3445View attachment 3446View attachment 3447
Giving just the mean and the standard deviation is NOT adequate to describe this distribution, because it is so skew. How many calls have negative durations? If you naively (or implicitly) assume a normal distribution, you would expect 28% to be negative. Thus, even though the standard deviation is "always" the most precise statistic for describing spread, it doesn't by itself give a useful picture of this distribution. If you are ever going to combine distributions, the marvelous power of the standard deviation is that it will combine quadratically - which is not true for IQR or for FWHM.

In this case, the median and IQR will give a better "feeling" of the distribution.
 
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