Statistical Measures of Location: Mathematical Formula Versus Geometric Approach

Abstract

Graphical method and mathematical formula are the two approaches for estimating measures of location. Understanding of many instructors of introductory statistics classes are: mean cannot be graphically determined and numerical (formula) approach is more precise than geometrical technique. Contrary to their understanding, this study estimate mean of a dataset geometrically (from histogram) by determining the centroid of histogram drawn from such data set. In addition, we also make known that mathematical formulas for mean, median and mode were derived geometrically (either from ogive or histogram). Finally, the research illustrated the two techniques with a survey data and established that the two approaches produce same results.