The most frequently used measures of central tendency for quantitative data are the mean, median and the mode. The following table shows examination scores from 28 students in an introductory statistics course:

83748579

82677870

18936427

93988278

68828399

96629358

95 93 71 59

• Using Excel, find the mean, mode, standard deviation, and 5-number summary (smallest data value, the first quartile, the median, the third quartile, and the largest data value) of this sample.

• Construct and paste a box plot depicting the 5-number summary.

• Explore the dataset for outliers? Are they present? If so, which one(s)?

• Would you prefer to use the mean, median or the mode as this dataset's measure of central tendency? Why?

• Why are measures of central tendency important in statistics?