Learn R: Mean, Median, and Mode

Learn to use R or manually calculate the mean, median, and mode of real-world datasets.

Key Concepts

Review core concepts you need to learn to master this subject

Mean of a Dataset

The mean() Function

Median of a Dataset

The median() Function in R

The mean, or average, of a dataset is calculated by adding all the values in the dataset and then dividing by the number of values in the set.

For example, for the dataset [1,2,3], the mean is 1+2+3 / 3 = 2.

Mean in R

Lesson 1 of 3

1
Introduction
Finding the center of a dataset is one of the most common ways to summarize statistical findings. Often, people communicate the center of data using words like, on average, usually, or often….
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2
Calculating Mean
The mean, often referred to as the average, is a way to measure the center of a dataset. The average of a set is calculated using a two-step process: 1. Add all of the observations in your da…
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3
Mean in R
While you’ve shown that you can calculate the average yourself, it becomes time-consuming as the size of your dataset increases — imagine adding all of the numbers in a dataset with 10,000 ob…
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4
Review and Discussion
In this lesson, you learned how to calculate the average of a dataset using the formula: \bar{x} = \frac{x_1 + x_2 … + x_{n}}{n} and the R function: mean(my_data) — Circling back to the ori…
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