Question

1. what measure of central tendency is most affected by an outlier in a dataset?

a. mode
b. range
c. mean
d. median

Explanation:

• The mode is the most frequent value, so outliers don't affect it much.
• The range is a measure of dispersion (not central tendency), so it's not relevant here.
• The mean is calculated as the sum of all values divided by the number of values ($\text{Mean} = \frac{\sum x}{n}$). An outlier, being an extreme value, will significantly change the sum, thus greatly affecting the mean.
• The median is the middle value when data is ordered, and an outlier usually has a smaller impact on the middle position.

Answer:

c. Mean