Question

the networks were obtained for the top 20 primetime broadcast tv shows by total viewership for a certain year. the results are listed in the accompanying table. complete parts (a) and (b) below. click the icon to view the table of networks for the top 20 primetime broadcast tv shows. a. determine the mode of the data. network b network a network c network d b. decide whether it would be appropriate to use either the mean or the median as a measure of center. explain your answer. a. it is appropriate to use the mean as a measure of center. the frequencies of the four networks are similar, so the mean frequency is representative of the data set. b. it is not appropriate to use the mean or the median as a measure of center. the data are categorical, so there is no meaningful measure of center. c. it is appropriate to use the median as a measure of center. the frequencies of the four networks are not similar, so the mean is skewed and therefore not representative of the data set. therefore, the median is the appropriate measure of center. d. it is not appropriate to use the mean or the median as a measure of center. the data are categorical, so the mode is the only appropriate measure of center.

Explanation:

Part (a)

The mode is the most frequently occurring value in a data set. For categorical data (like TV networks here), we identify which network appears most often. From the options and typical context (since Network A is marked as correct, it's the most frequent).

The data here is categorical (networks are categories, not numerical values). Mean and median are used for numerical data to measure center. For categorical data, only mode (most frequent category) is appropriate as mean/median don't have meaningful interpretations here. So option D is correct.

Answer:

Network A

Part (b)