Topic 11 Measures of Central Tendency for Grouped Data

From our previous Frequency Distribution Table we will add two more informative columns,
that of the Class Mark and Cumulative Frequency.

Table 2 Frequency distribution of the ages of survey participants

Class Intervals Class Frequency Percentage Class Cumulative

Boundaries Mark Frequency

20 – 27 19.5 – 27.5 3 15 23.5 3

28 – 35 27.5 – 35.5 7 35 31.5 10
36 – 43 35.5 – 43.5 5 25 39.5 15
44 – 51 43.5 – 51.5 2 10 47.5 17
52 – 59 51.5 – 59.5 2 10 55.5 19
60 – 67 59.5 – 67.5 1 5 63.5 20
Total 20 100
Notes:

1. The class mark is the midpoint of lower and upper class values of an interval. Add
the lower and upper class values and divide by 2, example: ; You can
add the class width subsequently, example: ; do this for all
intervals.
2. The cumulative frequency is obtained by subsequently adding the frequency ,
example and so on. The last must total the number of data
(or sample).
3. Watch out for the notations:
a. is the class mark or midpoint
b. is the frequency
c. is the cumulative frequency
d. is the lower class boundary, example, the of the third interval is 35.5
e. is the upper class boundary, example, the of the last interval is 67.5
The Mean

It is the sum of the products of the frequency and the class mark divide by the total data:
∑
̅

Frequency Class Mark

3 23.5 70.5
7 31.5 220.5
5 39.5 197.5
2 47.5 95.0
2 55.5 111.0
1 63.5 63.5
20 758

∑
̅

This means, the mean age is 37.9.

The Median

( )
̌

The should be that of the median class. The median class is found where the fall
in the cumulative distribution column. In this case, it is fall on the second class interval
“28 – 35” because its covers 10. Hence, . The class width can be
obtained by subtracting two consecutive upper or lower limits of class intervals, example

( )
̌
The Mode

The mode of grouped data is the class mark of the class interval with the highest frequency.
Hence the mode for this grouped data is 31.5.

Practice

Given the following grouped data, complete the table entries and find the mean, median and
mode.

Table 1 Test Scores of Students in Physics

Class Intervals Class Boundaries Frequency Percentage Class Mark Cumulative

Frequency

10 – 24 5
25 – 39 8
40 – 54 7
55 – 69 15
70 – 84 10
85 – 99 5
Total 50 100