# Measures of Central Tendency In statistics, **a measure of central tendency is a single value that aims to describe the whole population, or sample, data set**. Some common measures of central tendency are the mean, the median, and the mode. Although the mean usually refers to [[The Arithmetic Mean]], it's important to point out the existence of [[The Geometric Mean]] as well. You should avoid using a measure of central tendency alone to compare a data set. Instead some indicators of distribution should be used as well. See [Don't Compare Averages](https://martinfowler.com/articles/dont-compare-averages.html). For a mean that calculates the average or reciprocal values, see [[Harmonic Mean]]. An influential paper describing ways of calculating quantiles (and by extension the median value) was written by [Hyndman and Fan in 1996](https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/129116/original/Sample+Quantiles.pdf). It lists 9 methods for calculating quantiles.