Business statistics

3.1. Measures of Location: Mean

• Another illustration of the computation of a sample mean is given in the following situation. Suppose that a college placement office sent a questionnaire to a sample of business school graduates requesting information on monthly starting salaries. Table 3.1 shows the collected data.

Chapter 3. Descriptive Statistics: Numerical Measures

3.1. Measures of Location

Mean

The mean monthly starting salary for the sample of 12 business college graduates is computed as

Chapter 3. Descriptive Statistics: Numerical Measures

3.1. Measures of Location

Mean

Equation (3.1) shows how the mean is computed for a sample with n observations. The formula for computing the mean of a population remains the same, but we use different notation to indicate that we are working with the entire population. The number of observations in a population is denoted by N and the symbol for a population mean is µ.