Use the mode when the data are categorical (“nominal”) in nature and the people or things can fit into only one class, such as hair color, political affiliation, neighborhood location, and religion. When this is the case, these categories are called mutually exclusive. Use the median when you have extreme scores and you don’t want an average that is misleading, such as when the variable of interest is income expressed in dollars. Finally, use the mean when you have data that do not include extreme scores and are not categorical, such as the numerical score on a test or the number of seconds it
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