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

According to Laerd Statistics, “a measure of central tendency is a single value that attempts to describe a set of data by identifying the central position within that set of data.”

From Slate • Dec. 5, 2019

Mean a number that measures the central tendency; a common name for mean is ‘average.’

From Textbooks • Sep. 19, 2013

A study of this frequency surface shows a tendency for people to be grouped about the central tendency or average.

From The Science of Human Nature A Psychology for Beginners by Pyle, William Henry

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