Central tendency is a measure of the typical result in a task, sample or condition. It becomes particularly important when we want to compare results in different conditions. For example, if I wanted to know the difference between marks of boys and girls in psychology essays I wouldn’t want to look at hundreds of scores. I’d want to see the central tendency for each group. In your study of psychology you will come across three measures of central tendency.
The mean is a measure of central tendency. When we speak of ‘the average’ in everyday contexts we are almost certainly talking about the mean. To be really picky, the mean is the average, and alternative measures like the median and mode should just be called measures of central tendency, not measures of average.
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