Calculate the Mean of a Data Set - [6-8-5]

View more at http://www.MathAndScience.com. In this lesson, you will learn what the mean of a data set is, and how calculating the mean can tell us a great deal about a set of data. The mean is one of three ways to measure the center of a data set. We find the mean by adding up the data values, then dividing by the number of data points. In this way, we find a center value that is representative of the data. The only downside is that any outliers in the data will be incorporated into the calculation, which can skew the mean undesirably. If outliers are present in the data, it is more common to calculate the median of the data set, in which we throw out the outliers and focus on the data value that lies in the center of the data when ordered numerically.