A golf team's 666 members had the scores below in their most recent tournament:
70,\,72,\,74,\,76,\,80,\,11470,72,74,76,80,114
If you calculate the mean, you would get 81.
If you find the median, you would get 75.
Which measure best describes the scores of the team?
The "best" measure should be representative of a "typical" score in this data set. Did most of the golfers on the team score around the mean, or the median?
The golfer who scored 114114114 is an outlier because they scored much higher than the rest of the team. Because there is a high outlier, the median is the best measure to describe the scores. The mean of 818181 is higher than every score but one, so it doesn't represent the scores very well.
The answer:
The median best describes the scores of the team, because the mean is higher than almost all of the scores in the data set.
Now it's your turn!
Create a word problem, similar to this one, where it would be best to use the median, instead of the mean, as the average.
