Outliers and Central Tendencies

This objective of this program is to illustrate the relationship between outliers and central tendencies--mean, medium, and mode. It is a popular belief that at the presence of outliers the mean skews towards the outliers, the mode is most robust and the medium is between the previous two. Actually in many cases even there are quite a few outliers and the outliers are very extreme, the medium and mode are still in the same location.

This program is very easy to use. A pre-defined dataset is plotted when the program is loaded. You can show the mean, medium, and mode by selecting one of the radio buttons and click OK. I intend not to show all three at the same time because in most cases the mode and the medium are overlapped and therefore they must be shown one by one.

You can use the pull down menu to add outliers or reset the dataset to the original.