Which one answers the question
A shop stocks school shirts. Chest sizes in inches: 30, 30, 32, 30, 34, 36, 38. Which should the shop use: the mean, the median or the mode?
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| Recipe | How you get it | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Mean | Add all, then share the total equally | What would each get, shared evenly? |
| Median | Sort them, take the middle | What value is in the middle of the sorted list? |
| Mode | Count how often each value appears | Which value appears most? |
A shop must stock the sizes that sell most. The shop should use the mode.
The shop wants the size that appears most often. That is the mode, 30. The mean is about 32.86, and no shirt has that size.
A total shared equally is the mean. With one far-off reading, the median shows a usual value better. The far reading moves the median much less than the mean.