Question

Which of the following is a positional average
A.Arithmetic mean
B.Geometric Mean
C.Harmonic Mean
D.Median

Answer 1

Hint: A positional average by its names, suggest that the value of this average will be related to its position in the data set. Of the given options only median one such value which depends on its position in the data set that is it always occupies the middle position in an ascending order data.

Complete step-by-step answer:
Median of a data set in the middle value of that data set when it is arranged in an ascending order. To find the average of a data we generally have to find the sum of all the values and then divide it by the count of the values. However to find the median of a data, all we need to do is arrange the data in an ascending order and then find the middle value. Thus, by definition we can say that the median which supposedly represents the overall data, is dependent on its position.
Thus, median is a position average which represents the overall data based on its position.
Hence, option (D) is the correct option

Note: When we say the middle value is the median, we are referring to the data which has an odd number of values, however if the count of values is even, we know that there won’t be a middle value. For such cases, we find the average of the middle 2 values and denote the average as the median for the data given.