how do I calculate a mean

[Guest]

I have a frequency distribution of a five point scaled question. The data is
not in raw form....just columns of responses....but a set of frequencies
As=22, Bs=13, Cs=24 etc.....if I had a column with 22 As, 13 Bs and 24 Cs I
would just use the Average calculation to calculate the mean of this data.
Short of entering 22 As into the column followed by 13 Bs etc....how can I
calculate a mean. I'm using Excel 2000

 

[Chip]

So lets say you had a list of 22 As, 13 Bs, 24Cs...what math do you
want to do with them then?

 

[Michael R Middleton]

higgypop -

Your data are ranked categories, i.e., ordinal data. The appropriate measure
of central tendency is a mode or median.

If you had numerical data, then an appropriate measure of central tendency
is the mean.

- Mike

www.mikemiddleton.com

+++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[Tushar Mehta]

What does it mean to average letters such as A, B, and C? How do you
define the average of 22As, 13Bs and 24Cs to be?

As Mike has already pointed out, check out the mode or median.

If, on the other hand, you transformed the letter scores into numbers,
say 4, 3, 2, and 1 for D, you could calculate the mean with the formula
=SUMPRODUCT(numeric scores,# of occurences)/SUM(# of occurences).

--
Regards,

Tushar Mehta
www.tushar-mehta.com
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