Stats Question: The distribution of the top 1% of individual incomes in the US is...

lizierossetti

New member
Joined
Mar 8, 2017
Messages
2
The distribution of the top 1% of individual incomes in the United States is strongly skewed to the right. In 1997, the two measures of center for the top 1% were $330,000 and $675,000.
Which number best represents the mean income and which represents the median income?


a) $330,000 is the mean and $675,000 is the median.
b) $330,000 is the median and $675,000 is the mean
 
Okay, so considering you've posted two different stats problems and shown no work of your own on either, I'll conclude you're stuck at the very beginning and thus have no work to show. So let's start with the definitions of the various terms. The mean of a data sethttp://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/vol8/mean.html is also commonly known as the average. It is calculated by summing up all the scores and dividing by how many there are. The median of a data set is the middle score. 50% of the scores will have a higher value than the median, and 50% a lower value. What does that suggest have several very large values would do to the mean? What would it do for the average? You might find it helpful to consider a data of set of 100 numbers. Each of these numbers is 10. We know that the mean and median are both 10. Now, what happens if we replace one of those scores with 1 million? Obviously the mean and median will both increase by a large amount. But which one increases more? Why? How does that help you solve this problem?
 
Top