Lesson 2

Explore

 

In Discover you may have noticed that Vancouver’s average housing cost is much greater than the other listed averages. In the next activity, you will use the methods of calculating the mean, median, and mode learned in the last lesson to determine how each is changed by including or excluding Vancouver in your calculation.

 

Self-Check 1

 

Use the data from the table to respond to the questions.

 

City	Average Housing Prices ($1000)
St. John	168
Winnipeg	243
Halifax	269
Saskatoon	310
Montréal	324
Edmonton	329
Vancouver	809

Source: The Canadian Real Estate Association <http://www.crea.ca/public/news_stats/statistics.htm>;

 

 

You can use a table like the following for your responses.

	Mean	Median
All Cities
All Cities Excluding Vancouver

1.  
   1. Determine the mean and median for all cities in the table of data. Answer
   2. Determine the mean and median for all cities excluding Vancouver. Answer
      
      
2. In Discover you were asked to estimate the average cost of a house in Canada. How does your calculation of each mean in the table of data compare to your estimate? Answer
3. Which of the two calculated means better represents the data? Provide an explanation to support your choice. Answer
4. Which of the two central tendencies, mean or median, was more affected by excluding Vancouver’s data from your calculations? Provide evidence to support your response. Answer