Mean, Median And Mode

Sometimes we can generate a lot of data in research or even in daily life and when it comes to analyse them we are always confused with the number of ways and formulae that may be available and it is hard to choose the right one. As an example: A student carried out a survey in the Accident and Emergency Unit to assess the number of casualties related to alcohol abuse. The figures were as follows for one week: Monday to Sunday: 10,5,10,15,60,80,100 The mean is the average i.e the total(280) divided by number of days (7): Mean=280/7=40 per day Median is the number of casualties midway between the maximum and minimum if they are arranged in an order: 5 10 10 15 60 80 100 So middle number is 15 Therefore the median number of alcohol related admissions was 15 per day The mode is the most recurring number and in this case it is 10. Mode=10 admissions per day When it comes to data presentation then which one will better describe the situation? This depends on the nature of the data. It gets more and more complicated. Mode or Median is better than mean as the data is not normally distributed in this case. As it can be seen there are more admissions over a weekends compared to weekdays around 10 times and using mean to describe the situation will be erroneous.