Question

Find the mean, the median, and the mode of the collection of numbers. $$-6,20,-8,-18,10$$

Short answer

The mean of this set of numbers is \(-0.4\), the median is \(-6\), and there's no mode because all numbers occur only once.

Step-by-step solution

Calculating the Mean

First, one must add all the numbers together and then divide by the quantity of numbers available. For this collection of numbers, \(-6 + 20 - 8 - 18 + 10 = -2\). There are five numbers in total, so the mean is found by dividing -2 by 5, which yields \(-0.4\).

Calculating the Median

First, sort the collection of numbers in ascending order, which gives: \(-18, -8, -6, 10, 20\). For datasets with an odd number of observations, the median is the middling number. In this case, the median number is \(-6\).

Calculating the Mode

The mode of a dataset is defined as the number that appears most often. In this dataset, all numbers appear only once, implying that there's no mode.