Engineering Statistics Lecture: 3

Data Summary and display Time: 2 hrs

(Measurement of central tendency)
As we mentioned before in lecture 2 that the central tendency can be measured using average
mean, Mode or Medial, this can be summarized in the following flowchart:

Positional Average

1-Mode:

The mode refers to that value in a distribution, which occur most frequently. It is an actual
value, which has the highest concentration of items in and around it.
A) Mode for set (ungrouped data)
To find a mode for ungrouped data you need to do:
 Arrange the data values either in ascending or descending order, so that we can easily
find the repeated values and their frequency.
 The highest frequency of an observation will be the mode of the given data.
 Alternatively, we can form a frequency distribution table to get the mode.
 In some cases, the mode may be absent while in some cases there may be more than
one mode.

Example 1: Find the mode for the following:

1- 12, 10, 15, 24, 30
Sol: 10, 12, 15, 24, 30 (no mode)
2- 7, 10, 15, 12, 7, 14, 24, 10, 7, 20, 10
Sol: 7, 7, 7, 10, 10, 10, 12, 14, 15, 20, 14 (the modes are 7 and 10)

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Example 2: Find the mode of the following marks obtained by 25 students in a mathematics
test out of 50.
34, 46, 45, 39, 43, 22, 27, 37, 46, 35, 34, 39, 40, 30, 30, 41, 37, 46, 39, 29, 34, 39, 35, 43, 30

Solution:

First:

Second:

B) Mode For Grouped data:

 In a grouped frequency distribution, unlike ungrouped data, it is impossible to
determine the mode by looking at the frequencies.
 We can only locate a class with the maximum frequency, called the modal class. The
mode is a value that lies in the modal class and is calculated using the formula written
below:
(𝒇𝟏 − 𝒇𝟎 )
𝑴𝒐𝒅𝒆 = 𝒍 + [ ]×𝒉
(𝟐𝒇𝟏 − 𝒇𝟎 − 𝒇𝟐 )
Where:
l = Lower limit of the modal class
h = Size of the class interval (Class width)
f1 = Frequency of the modal class
f0 = Frequency of the class preceding the modal class
f2 = Frequency of the class succeeding the modal class
Example 3: Calculate the mode of the following frequency distribution.

Class 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60-70 70-80 80-90

Frequency 7 14 13 12 20 11 15 8

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Solution:

 Practice Problems and Homework

1) Calculate the mode for the data: 8, 2, 3, 5, 4, 2, 8, 2, 5, 3, 8, 5, 6, 3, 2, 3, 8, 5, 5, 6
2) Find the mode of the following distribution:
CIass 45 – 55 55 – 65 65 – 75 75 – 85 85 – 95
Frequency 3 10 11 8 3

3) What is the mode of the following distribution?

Class 0–5 6 – 11 12 – 17 18 – 23 24 – 29
Frequency 13 10 15 8 11

2-Median:

The median is a measure of central tendency that divides the data into two equal parts, half
below the median and half above.

A) For ungrouped data or raw data:

 Arrange the data in either ascending or descending order of magnitude.

 If the number of observations n is an odd number, then the median is represented by
the numerical value of x, corresponds to the positioning point of n+1 / 2 in ordered
observations. That is,
Median = value of (n+1 / 2)th observation in the data array
 If the number of observations n is an even number, then the median is defined as the
arithmetic mean of the middle values in the array that is:
𝒏 𝒏
𝒗𝒂𝒍𝒖𝒆 𝒐𝒇 (𝟐 )𝒕𝒉 𝒐𝒃𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 + 𝒗𝒂𝒍𝒖𝒆 𝒐𝒇 (𝟐 + 𝟏)𝒕𝒉 𝒐𝒃𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏
𝑀𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒏 =
𝟐

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Example 4: The number of rooms in the seven five stars hotel in Chennai city is 71, 30, 61,
59, 31, 40 and 29. Find the median number of rooms.

Solution:

Example 5: The export of agricultural product in million dollars from a country during eight
quarters in 1974 and 1975 was recorded as 29.7, 16.6, 2.3, 14.1, 36.6, 18.7, 3.5, 21.3

Find the median of the given set of values.

Solution:

B) Median for grouped data

Firstly, to calculate the median for grouped data we need to know cumulative frequency (c.f):
The cumulative frequencies are calculated to know the total number of items above or below a
certain limit.

 What is the cumulative frequency distribution? We find the cumulative frequency

distribution for a class by adding the frequency of that class to the frequencies of all
previous classes.
 These cumulative frequencies are useful to calculate median, quartiles, deciles and
percentiles.

I) Median for grouped data without intervals

We can find median using following steps

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 • Calculate the cumulative frequencies
• Find (N+1)/2, where N=Σf=total frequencies
• Identify the cumulative frequency just greater than (N+1)/2
• The value of x corresponding to that cumulative frequency is the (N+1)/2 median.

Example 6:

The following data are the weights of students in a class. Find the median weights of the
students:

Weight (kg) 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Number of Student 4 7 12 15 13 5 4
Solution:

Weight (kg) , x Number of student (f) Cumulative student (c.f)

10 4
20 7
30 12
40 15
50 13
60 5
70 4

II) Median for grouped data with intervals:

In this case, the data is given in the form of a frequency table with class-interval etc., The
following formula is used to calculate the median.

𝑁
( 2 − 𝑚)
𝑀𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑛 = 𝑙 + ( )×ℎ
𝑓

Where:

l = Lower limit of the median class

N = Total Numbers of frequencies
f = Frequency of the median class
m = Cumulative frequency of the class preceding the median class

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h= the class interval of the median class.

Example 7:

The following data attained from a garden record of certain period. Calculate the median
weight of the apple:

Weight in grams 410-420 420-430 430-440 440-450 450-460 460-470 470-480

No. of apples 14 20 42 54 45 18 17
Solution:

Weight in grams No. of apples (f) Cumulative Frequency (c.f)

410-420 14
420-430 20
430-440 42
440-450 54
450-460 45
460-470 18
470-480 17
Total

Solution:

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Example 8:
Determine the mean, median, and mode for the data presented in the following frequency
table.

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There are two terms relate to central tendency which is
1) Quartile:
The median divides the sample in half. Quartiles divide it as nearly as possible into quarters:
 For ungrouped data
𝒊(𝒏 + 𝟏)
𝑸𝒊 =
𝟒
 For grouped data:
You can use the following formula to calculate quartiles for grouped data:
Qi = l + (h/f) * (iN/4 – m)
Where:
l: The lower bound of the interval that contains the ith quartile
h: The class width
f: The frequency of the interval that contains the ith quartile
N: The total frequency
m: The cumulative frequency before to the interval that contains the ith quartil
Example 9:
Suppose we have the following frequency distribution:
Class Intervals Frequency Cumulative Frequency
1-5 6
6-10 19
11-15 13
16-20 20
21-25 12
26-30 11
31-35 6
36-40 5

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