______________________________________________________________________________ 3. Use a colon between independent clauses if the second clause summarizes or explains the first. A colon is used to introduce an idea that is an explanation or continuation of the one that comes before the colon. The colon can be considered as a gateway inviting the reader to go on. Look at these examples: Ben suddenly canceled his evening plans for a simple reason: his car was out of gas.
Measures of Center: Mean, Median, and Mode Measures of center generally tell us about the middle, or center, of a distribution. They are the mean, the median, and the mode. Each plays a useful role in Statistics. The Mean The mean, or arithmetic average, is calculated by adding all the data values and dividing by the number of values.
The median can be used as a measure of location when a distribution is skewed, when end-values are not known, or when one requires reduced importance to be attached to outliers, e.g., because they may be measurement errors. The median of a uniform distribution in the interval [ a, b ] is (a + b) / 2, which is also the mean. 2  The median of a Cauchy distribution with location parameter x 0 and scale parameter y is x 0, the location parameter.