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What summary statistics are best used to report the "typical" value of a data set when the distribution is strongly skewed?

Short Answer

Expert verified
The best summary statistics to report the 'typical' value of a strongly skewed data set are the median and interquartile range. The median is less influenced by extreme values than the mean and the interquartile range provides an understanding of the statistical dispersion.

Step by step solution

01

Understand the concept of Skewness

Skewness is a measure of the asymmetry of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable about its mean. In other words, skewness identifies the direction and relative size of a distribution's tail. When a distribution is asymmetric, or 'skewed', it means that it has more observations on one side of the graph than the other.
02

Understand Summary Statistics in context of Skewness

Summary statistics, like mean, median, and mode, are calculated to give a 'typical' value for a data set. However, when a data set is skewed, using the mean can be misleading because it is influenced by the extreme values in the data set. The median and the mode are less affected by these extreme values.
03

Select the Best-suited Summary Statistics

Since the median and the mode are less affected by extreme values, these summary statistics are more reliable for skewed distributions. Especially, the median is often preferable because it is the value that separates the highest half from the lowest half in a data set, providing a 'typical' value that isn't overly influenced by the skewness. However, it's also valuable to consider the interquartile range, which gives an impression of the statistical dispersion.

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