You can find the mean, or average, of a data set in two simple steps: · Find the sum of the values by adding them all up. · Divide the sum by the number of values in the data set. · This method is the same whether you are dealing with sample or population data or positive or negative numbers.

The arithmetic mean is the most commonly used mean. It’s often simply called the mean or the average. But there are some other types of means you can calculate depending on your research purposes: · Weighted mean: some values contribute more to the mean than others. · Geometric mean: values are multiplied rather than summed up. · Harmonic mean: reciprocals of values are used instead of the values themselves.

The mean is the most frequently used measure of central tendency because it uses all values in the data set to give you an average. · For data from skewed distributions, the median is better than the mean because it isn’t influenced by extremely large values. · The mode is the only measure you can use for nominal or categorical data that can’t be ordered.