The variability of each shift is shown as follows:

Shift one - Standard deviation of 1.5 minutes

Shift two - Standard deviation of 1.0 minutes

Shift three - Standard deviation of 2.5 minutes

Central tendency is where our data is located. Think about the data on a number line. Different groups of data may be centrally located at different points on this number line. We typically use the mean (average), median, and mode to describe the central location of data. Looking at our call center wait times we find the following mean wait times:

Shift one -5.0 minutes

Shift two -6.5 minutes

Shift three -3.8 minutes

Which of the shifts is performing better?