Week 5
Absolute Value
No Negatives!
So in practice “absolute value” means to remove any negative sign in front of a number, and to think of all numbers as positive (or zero).
Absolute Value Symbol
To show that we want the absolute value of something, we put “|” marks either side (they are called “bars” and are found on the right side of a keyboard), like these examples:
| |−5| = 5 | |7| = 7 |
Kaplan pages 324-325
Mean Median Mode and Range
Mean, median, and mode are three kinds of “averages”. There are many “averages” in statistics, but these are, I think, the three most common, and are certainly the three you are most likely to encounter in your pre-statistics courses, if the topic comes up at all.
The “mean” is the “average” you’re used to, where you add up all the numbers and then divide by the number of numbers. The “median” is the “middle” value in the list of numbers. To find the median, your numbers have to be listed in numerical order from smallest to largest, so you may have to rewrite your list before you can find the median. The “mode” is the value that occurs most often. If no number in the list is repeated, then there is no mode for the list.
The range is the greatest number subtracted by the smallest number.
GED Program 