Question

a) Determine the mode of the data.
b) Decide whether it would be appropriate to use either the mean or median as a measure of center. Explain your answer.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices. From We found that the law schools of the justices of the US Supreme Court, as of September 9, 2011, are as follows

Short answer

a) Harvard.

b) For the given data the mode is appropriate to use for the given data.

Reason: Here, the data set based on the law schools of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is not numerical. That is, the data set is qualitative data. Hence, the mean and median cannot calculate for the non numerical data. Thus, the mean and median would not be appropriate to use for the given data. Moreover, the mode would be appropriate to use for the qualitative data.

Step-by-step solution

Step 1. Given information. 

We have given data set based on the law schools of the justices .

Step 2. To find mode.  

The greatest frequency is the mode of the data set.

The mode of the data is Harvard.

Step 3. Decide either the mean or median as a measure of center. 

The mode would be appropriate to use for given data.

Reason: This data collection is based on the law schools of the Supreme Court judges, which is not numerical. That is, the data set is made up of qualitative information. As a result, the mean and median for non-numerical data cannot be calculated. As a result, the mean and median would be inappropriate for the data. In addition, the approach would be excellent for qualitative data.