. An official for the department of transportation counted the number of vehicles that passed through a busy intersection. He co
unted for 10 consecutive minutes and recorded the number of vehicles for each minute: 18, 41, 25, 9, 22, 36, 24, 13, 25, and 28. What number best describes the data?
When dealing with a pool of data, the field of study is called statistics. This refers to the study of sample data and how they correlate it with the overall trend of the population. By doing this, they use terms that can best represent the sample data. These three are the most common:
1. Mean - this is the arithmetic average of the data
Mean = (<span>8+41+25+9+22+36+24+13+25+28)/10 = 23.1
2. Mode - this is the most frequent data point that can occur. In this case, the mode is 25 because it occurred twice.
3. Median - this is the middle of the sample data arranging it from least to greatest. In this case: 8, 9, 13, 22, 24, 25, 25, 28, 36, 41. The middle number is 25. Thus, the median is 25.</span>
