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Measure of Position

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14 views13 pages

Measure of Position

Uploaded by

wahab asghar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Measures of Position
In addition to measures of central tendency and measures of variation, there are measures of position
or location. These measures include standard scores, percentiles, deciles, and quartiles. They are used
to locate the relative position of a data value in the data set. For example, if a value is located at the
80th percentile, it means that 80% of the values fall below it in the distribution and 20% of the values
fall above it. The median is the value that corresponds to the 50th percentile, since one-half of the
values fall below it and one half of the values fall above it. This section discusses these measures of
position.
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Standard Scores or Z-Score


There is an old saying, compare apples and oranges. But with the use of statistics, it can
be done to some extent. Suppose that a student scored 90 on a music test and 45 on an English exam.
Direct comparison of raw scores is impossible, since the exams might not be equivalent in terms of
number of questions, value of each question, and so on. However, a comparison of a relative standard
similar to both can be made. This comparison uses the mean and standard deviation and is called a
standard score or z score. (We also use z scores in later chapters.) A standard score or z score tells
how many standard deviations a data value is above or below the mean for a specific distribution of
values. If a standard score is zero, then the data value is the same as the mean. Note that if the z score
is positive, the score is above the mean. If the z score is 0, the score is the same as the mean. And if
the z score is negative, the score is below the mean.
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Standard Scores or Z-Score


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Percentiles
Percentiles are position measures used in educational and health-related fields to indicate the position
of an individual in a group. Percentiles divide the data set into 100 equal groups.
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Percentiles
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Percentiles
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Percentiles
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Percentiles
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Quartiles
Quartiles divide the distribution into four groups, separated by Q1, Q2, Q3. Note that Q1 is the same
as the 25th percentile; Q2 is the same as the 50th percentile, or the median; Q3 corresponds to the
75th percentile, as shown:
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Quartiles
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Deciles
Deciles divide the distribution into 10 groups, as shown. They are denoted by D1, D2, etc.

Note that D1 corresponds to P10; D2 corresponds to P20; etc.


Deciles can be found by using the formulas given for percentiles.
Taken altogether then, these are the relationships among percentiles, deciles, and quartiles.
Deciles are denoted by D1, D2, D3, . . . , D9, and they correspond to P10, P20, P30, . . . , P90.
Quartiles are denoted by Q1, Q2, Q3 and they correspond to P25, P50, P75. The median is the same
as P50 or Q2 or D5.
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Outliers
Outliers
An outlier is an extremely high or an extremely low data value when compared with the rest of the
data values.
An outlier can strongly affect the mean and standard deviation of a variable. For example, suppose a
researcher mistakenly recorded an extremely high data value. This value would then make the mean
and standard deviation of the variable much larger than they really were. Outliers can have an effect
on other statistics as well.
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Outliers

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