The the sake of an example, assume that the Statistics team collects five bearings off a radio tower located on the shore near Duck Island Roads. Those five bearings read as follows: 30˚, 28˚, 28˚, 26˚, and 24˚. Which is correct? Are any of them correct?
The mean is the most well-known type of average. To determine the mean, add up the total value of all the data points, then divide by the number of data points. Here, the mean average would be (30+28+28+26+24)/5, or 27.2 degrees.
The median is the "middle" data point. In this case, when all data points are arranged from high to low, the median average indicated that a bearing 28˚ is probably the most accurate.
The mode is the most commonly found value in a data set. Of five data points, 28˚ is the only value to occur more than once. Thus, the mode also incidates toward a correct bearing of 28 degrees.