Answer each question fully. Use a minimum of 250 words for a complete discussion post. While it is not required in this discussion, feel free to bring in outside resources to support your answers. Outside resources include materials outside of the textbook, such as a website. An average is an attempt to summarize a collection of data into just one number. 1) Explain how the mean, median, and mode all represent averages in this context. 2) Why is the mean a balance point? Why is the median a midway point? Why is the mode the most common data point? 3) List three areas of daily life in which you think the mean, median, or mode would be the best choice to describe an “average and explain why.

Definition Definition Measure of central tendency that is the value that occurs most frequently in a data set. A data set may have more than one mode if multiple categories repeat an equal number of times. For example, in a data set with five item—3, 5, 5, 29, 473—the mode is 5 because it occurs twice and no other value occurs more than once. On a histogram or bar chart, the element with the highest bar represents the mode. Therefore, the mode is sometimes considered the most popular option. The mode is useful for nominal or categorical data (e.g., the most common color car that users purchase), but it is problematic for continuous data because it is more likely not to have any value that is more frequent than the other.