Statistics help us make sense of data. The three most common measures of "central tendency" are mean, median, and mode. They each tell a different story about your numbers.
Always check for outliers! If your Mean is much higher than your Median, you have "right-skewed" data (like income). If Mean is lower, it's "left-skewed". The Median is usually the most honest representation of "typical" in real-world data.
Imagine 5 students scored: 20, 80, 85, 90, 90.
Don't use the Mean for things like salaries or home prices. One CEO earning $10M can make the "average" salary look huge, even if everyone else earns $30k. Use Median for money!
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Mean is the average: add all numbers and divide by how many there are. It's the most common way to find the "center" of data, but it's sensitive to extreme values.
Median is the middle number when sorted. For even counts, average the two middle numbers. It's reliable against outliers.
Mode is the most frequently occurring number in a dataset. It's the only measure that works for non-numeric data (like "Red, Blue, Red" - mode is Red).
Use median when you have outliers that would skew the mean (like income or house prices). Use mean for symmetric data (like height or test scores).