What is the mean of a data set?

• A. The middle value of the ordered data
• B. The most frequent value
• C. The range of the data
• D. Add up all the numbers in a set then divide by the amount of numbers

Answer: (D)

The mean, or average, is found by adding all the numbers in the data set and then dividing by how many numbers there are. This gives a single value that represents the overall level of the data and acts like the balance point of the numbers. For example, with 2, 4, 6, 8, the sum is 20 and there are 4 numbers, so the mean is 5. The mean can be influenced by very large or very small values, which is important to keep in mind. The middle value after sorting is the median, the most frequent value is the mode, and the range is the difference between the largest and smallest values.