more sense. If you are averaging a small ik about group of factory wages fairly near each other, the arithmetic mean is very accurate and fast. If there are 500 new houses in a development all within $10,000 of each other in value, then the median is much quicker and quite accurate too. Dealing with the cumulative effects of inflation or interest requires the geometric mean if you want accuracy. A common-sense example: Although it's true that the average family has 1.65 children, automobile designers will make better decisions by using the modal value of 2.0 kids. EXERCISES 3.6 Self-Check Exercises 3-40 SC 3-9 Here are the ages in years of the cars worked on by the Village Autohaus last week: 6 3 6 11 7 9 10 2 4 10 6 2 1 5 (a) Compute the mode for this data set. (b) Compute the mean of the data set. c) Compare parts (a) and (b) and comment on which is the better measure of the central tendency of the data. SC 3-10 The ages of a sample of the students attending Sandhills Community College this semester are