Measurements of the central tendency are measurements that display where on the scale the distribution is centered. There are three ways to do so: the mode, the median and the mean.

1. Mode: is used least frequently and is often least useful. The mode is simply the most frequently occurring score.
2. Median: the score that corresponds to the point of which 50% of all scores falls below when the data are ordered numerically. The median is also called the 50^th percentile. Imagine that we have the scores 4, 6, 8, 9, and 16. Here, the median is 8. In case of an even number of scores, for example 4, 6, 8, 12, 15, and 16, the median falls between 8 and 12. In this case, we take the mean of the two middle scores as median - 10 in this case.
3. Mean: this measurement is used most frequently, because all scores of the distributions are included. The mean is the sum of the scores divided by the total amount of scores. A disadvantage of the mean is that it is influenced by extreme scores.