The real estate section of a local newspaper listed he homes sold in the past month. The following are the sale prices of each home sold: $124,000; $136,000; $116,000; $127,000; $141,000; $131,000; $116,000; $160,000; $139,000; $522,000. Which would you use to find the "average" sale and price?
A. median and mode
B. mode
C. mean
D. median

Question

The real estate section of a local newspaper listed he homes sold in the past month. The following are the sale prices of each home sold: $124,000; $136,000; $116,000; $127,000; $141,000; $131,000; $116,000; $160,000; $139,000; $522,000. Which would you use to find the "average" sale and price?
A. median and mode
B. mode
C. mean
D. median

kropot72 · Answer

The mode is the most frequently occurring value. It is unlikely that the mode will correctly give the "average" in this case, the reason being that the lowest price ($116,000) is the mode. Therefore choices A and B can be eliminated.
Notice that the last price in the list ($522,000) is an outlier, being around 4 times the other prices. If the true average of the prices was calculated by adding all the prices and dividing by 10 (the number of houses) the outlier would seriously distort the average. Therefore choice C can be eliminated.
What is the remaining choice?

anonymous · Answer

i see how to do that now... D is the answer. Thank you for you help! :)

kropot72 · Answer

You're welcome :)