Probability, Statistics, and Data Analysis

Notes # 2

Other Measures of Location

Weighted Mean (Ungrouped Data)

The weighted mean is similar to the usual arithmetic mean x except that instead
of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points
contribute more than others. It is used when there is a relative importance of each value
in the data.
n

w x i i
xw  i 1
n

w
i 1
i

Example 1: Suppose you take three 100-point exams in your statistics class and score 80,
80 and 85. The last exam is much easier than the first two, so your professor has given it
less weight. The weights for the three exams are

Exam 1: 40 % of your grade. (Note: 40% as a decimal is .4.)

Exam 2: 40 % of your grade.

Exam 3: 20 % of your grade.

What is your weighted mean for the class?

Solution:

1
Percentiles, Deciles, and Quartiles (Ungrouped Data)

 Percentiles Pk divide the distribution into 100 equal parts such that 1% of the data
are  P1; 2% of the data are  P2; and so on, for k = 1, 2,…,99.
 Deciles Dk divide the distribution into 10 equal parts such that that 10% of the
data are  D1; 20% of the data are  D2; and so on, for k = 1, 2,…,9.
 Quartiles Qk divide the distribution into 4 equal parts such that 25% of the data
are  Q1; 50% of the data are  D2; and so on, for k = 1, 2, 3.

Computational Formulas (Ungrouped Data)

If the data are arranged in ascending order, then

 k (n  1) 
Pk   th observation
 100 

 k (n  1) 
Dk   th observation
 10 

 k (n  1) 
Qk   th observation
 4 

Example 2:

The following are the number of defective items produced in a month for the last 24
months.

40, 30, 36, 26, 16, 21, 33, 40, 32, 14, 10, 29, 33, 39, 17, 11, 18, 34, 19, 24, 21, 35, 42, 37

Calculate the 80th percentile, the first quartile, the median, the 3rd quartile, and the 5th
decile. Interpret the results.

Solution:

2
Measures of Variation

A measure of variation indicates the degree of spread or variability of a given set of data.
Thus, we will assess the degree to which the data differ from one another and how far
apart they differ from the mean.

Variance (Ungrouped Data)

 The sample variance is the measure of the spread of the data about the mean.

 x i  x
2

s2  i 1
(Definitional Formula)
n 1
2
n
 n 
n  x    xi  2
i

 i 1  i 1  (Computational Formula)
n(n  1)

Standard Deviation (Ungrouped Data)

 The sample standard deviation is the positive square root of the sample variance.
It is used most often because it puts the back the measure in line with the original
data.
s  s2

Example 3:

Find the variance and standard deviation for the sample data:

6, 3, 8, 5, 3

Solution: