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central tendency

American

noun

Statistics.

the tendency of samples of a given measurement to cluster around some central value.

central tendency British

noun

statistics the tendency of the values of a random variable to cluster around the mean, median, and mode

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of central tendency

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The study, published in eLife, describes how the model shows neural circuits can give rise to both recency and central tendency biases at the same time through a single mechanism.

From Science Daily • Apr. 24, 2024

A central tendency of people with a narcissistic personality is that they treat other people as an extension of themselves and their bodies.

From Salon • Jul. 21, 2023

Come along, dear reader, and we’ll learn all about measures of central tendency.

From Slate • Dec. 5, 2019

I will say that my underlying view for next year is broadly consistent with the central tendency of the committee.

From New York Times • Dec. 20, 2016

Figure 61 shows that these adults varied from no problems solved correctly to eighteen, around eight as a central tendency.

From The Psychology of Arithmetic by Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023