Question

The numbers below represent the speeds of the last 6 vehicles that a police officer recorded:



68, 72, 78, 59, 73, 70



Find the mean absolute deviation of the numbers, and round to the nearest tenth if necessary.

Answer 1

To find the mean absolute deviation, we first need to find the mean of the speeds:

Mean = (68 + 72 + 78 + 59 + 73 + 70) / 6
Mean = 420 / 6
Mean = 70

Next, we find the absolute differences between each speed and the mean:

|68-70| = 2
|72-70| = 2
|78-70| = 8
|59-70| = 11
|73-70| = 3
|70-70| = 0

Then, we calculate the sum of the absolute differences:

2 + 2 + 8 + 11 + 3 + 0 = 26

Finally, we divide this sum by the total number of speeds (6) to find the mean absolute deviation:

Mean absolute deviation = 26 / 6
Mean absolute deviation = 4.33

So, the mean absolute deviation of the speeds is approximately 4.3 (rounded to the nearest tenth).