Central tendency - Definition and Overview

Central tendency is a term used in some fields of empirical research to refer to what statisticians sometimes call "location". A "measure of central tendency" is either a location parameter or a statistic used to estimate a location parameter. Examples include:

1. Arithmetic mean, the sum of all data divided by the number of observations in the data set.
2. Median, the value that separates the higher half from the lower half of the data set.
3. Mode, the most frequent value in the data set.

Other examples include the midrange (the mean of the highest and lowest values of the data or distribution), and the truncated mean used in some sports scoring with the particular case of the interquartile mean.

See also

• Average
• Mean
• Summary statistics
• Statistical theory