Christ the King College

College of Teacher Education

Prof. Ed 10
Assessment of Learning 2

Name: Judy Joyce B. Bartolome

Time: T/TH 1:00-2:30 pm

1. What is the importance of the different measures of central

tendency in assessing the performance of the students?
Answer: Central tendency is very useful in assessing the
performance of the students. It lets us know what is normal or
'average' for a set of data. It also condenses the data set down
to one representative value, which is useful when you are
working with large amounts of data. Measures of Central Tendency
provide a summary measure that attempts to describe a whole set
of data with a single value that represents the middle or centre
of its distribution. There are three main measures of central
tendency: the mean, the median and the mode.
When data is normally distributed, the mean, median and mode
should be identical, and are all effective in showing the most
typical value of a data set. It's important to look
the dispersion of a data set when interpreting the measures of
central tendency.

2. When do we use mean, median, and mode?

Answer: The mean is usually the best measure of central
tendency to use when your data distribution is continuous and
symmetrical, such as when your data is normally distributed.
However, it all depends on what you are trying to show from your
data. On the other hand, when the sample size is large and does
not include outliers, the mean score usually provides a better
measure of central tendency. “(Then goes on to give an example
of when the median is better.) “Use the median to describe the
middle of a set of data that does have an outlier. Again, it
depends on the question you are asking of the data, however, if
you question is "what is the average salary" in terms of "what
is the typical salary of an employee," then median would be a
much better measure than the mean. As we will find out later,
taking the median would be a better measure of central
tendency in this situation. Another time when we usually prefer
the median over the mean (or mode) is when our data is skewed
(i.e., the frequency distribution for our data is skewed).

3. What are the properties of mean, median, and mode?

Answer:
Properties of Mean
• It measures stability. Mean is the most stable among
other
measures of central tendency because every score contributes
to the value of the mean.
• It may easily affected by the extreme scores.
Properties of the Mean
• The sum of each score’s distance from the mean is zero.
• It may not be an actual score in the distribution.
• It can be applied to interval level of measurement.
• It is very easy to compute.
Properties of Median
• It may not be an actual observation in the data set.
• It can be applied in ordinal level.
• It is not affected by extreme values because median is a
positional measure.
Properties of Mode
 • It can be used when the data are qualitative as well as
quantitative.
• It may not be unique.
• It is affected by extreme values.
• It may not exist.
4. If there are extreme scores in the distribution, what is the
best measure of central tendency use?
Answer: Median. It is not affected by extreme values
because median is a positional measure.

5. What is a measure of variation?

Answer: Measures of variation quantities that express the
amount of variation in a random variable (compare measures of
location). Variation is sometimes described
as spread or dispersion to distinguish it from systematic trends
or differences. Measures of variation are either properties of
a probability distribution or sample estimates of them.

6. What are the different types of measures of variation and how

do we compute each type?
Answer:
The range of a sample is the difference between the
largest and smallest value. The interquartile range is
potentially more useful. If the sample is ranked in ascending
order of magnitude two values of x may be found, the first of
which is exceeded by 75% of the sample, the second by 25%; their
difference is the interquartile range. An analogous definition
applies to a probability distribution.
The variance is the expectation (or mean) of the
square of the difference between a random variable and its mean;
it is of fundamental importance in statistical analysis. The
variance of a continuous distribution with mean μ is and is
denoted by σ2. The variance of a discrete distribution is and is
also denoted by σ2. The sample variance of a sample
of n observations with mean x̄ is and is denoted by s2. The value
(n – 1) corrects for bias.
The standard deviation is the square root of the
variance, denoted by σ (for a distribution) or s (for a sample).
The standard deviation has the same units of measurement as the
mean, and for a normal distribution about 5% of the distribution
lies beyond about two standard deviations each side of the mean.
The standard deviation of the distribution of an estimated
quantity is termed the standard error.
The mean deviation is the mean of the absolute
deviations of the random variable from the mean.