You are a member of your local apartment association.  Recently, this association has received complaints from renters in a particular area of the city who feel their rent is much higher than other areas.  You investigate the complaint by collecting data from 4 different areas of the city (see table below). (a) Area A is the area that filed the complaint. Calculate the mean and the median of each area. (b) Do you feel Area A’s complaint is justified- why or why not? (c) Which do you think is a better measure to use in this situation - the mean or the median? Explain your reasoning.   Area A Area B Area C Area D 1275 1124 1085 928 1110 954 827 1096 975 815 793 862 862 1078 1170 735 1040 843 919 798 997 745 943 812 1119 796 756 1232 908 816 765 1036 890 938 809 998 1055 1082 1020 914 860 750 710 1005 975 703 775 930

Definition Definition Middle value of a data set. The median divides a data set into two halves, and it also called the 50th percentile. The median is much less affected by outliers and skewed data than the mean. If the number of elements in a dataset is odd, then the middlemost element of the data arranged in ascending or descending order is the median. If the number of elements in the dataset is even, the average of the two central elements of the arranged data is the median of the set. For example, if a dataset has five items—12, 13, 21, 27, 31—the median is the third item in ascending order, or 21. If a dataset has six items—12, 13, 21, 27, 31, 33—the median is the average of the third (21) and fourth (27) items. It is calculated as follows: (21 + 27) / 2 = 24.