Question

Chase randomly selects 240 people who only have a high school diploma (no higher) and records the annual income for each person. Nica randomly selects 115 people with master's degrees in Computer Science and records the annual income for each person.

Suppose that Chase's sample had a mean income of $35,256 per year. Put the mean, median and mode in order. For the lowest value choose 1., for the middle value choose 2. and for the highest value choose 3.

(Hint: Consider the shape of the distribution of income in the U.S.)

Unsure how I would go about finding the median and mode

Answer 1

The shape of the distribution of income in the U.S. is right skewed. (i.e Some people have unusually high income because of which the mean increases but not the median or mode)

Thus, the order is Mode < Median < Mean

Mode -> 1

Median -> 2

Mean -> 3

(For exact values of Median and mode, we would require the income of all the 240 people in the sample)