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Hereil
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Hi there,
Is there any other way of approximating the mean rather than using the classic formula of summing and dividing by the number of observations? Thank you

You can see that the median value is 9.1 for 2011. For 2012, if you sort by ascending values, you can see that out of 19 values, only 3 are above 9, so the mean is unlikely to be higher. This is enough to answer the question.
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What if 8.6 came twice in October 2012 ? Would Sentence 1 made true then ? If not what is the criteria for 'most-common' being true ?
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What if 8.6 came twice in October 2012 ? Would Sentence 1 made true then ? If not what is the criteria for 'most-common' being true ?
Indirectly question is asking for "mode" If there is another 8.6, then there are multiple answers to the question. "Most-common" can be true if same rate is observed across multiple states. Example: if 8.6 appears more than twice in 2012 column, then answer would have been "true".

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­
Official Explanation

­
Statement 1: Sort on October 2012. Only one state reported 8.6% unemployment in October 2012. Two states reported 8.5%, and two reported 6.9%.

Answer: False

Statement 2: Use the online calculator available to calculate the mean for October 2012. The sum of the 19 rates cited is 143.8. Divide by 19 to find the mean of 7.568421. Sort on the 2011 column to find the median of 9.1. The mean unemployment rate for these states in October 2012 was less than the median rate for October 2011.

Answer: True­
­
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Hereil
Hi there,
Is there any other way of approximating the mean rather than using the classic formula of summing and dividing by the number of observations? Thank you
­The median for 2011 is 8.6. We can see that the rate change in all rows is minor, leading me to think that the mean in 2012 may be less than 8.6. Plus, it is South Carolina to get 8.6 in 2012, 4 rows below the 8.6 in 2011. 
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Starscreen60
Hereil
Quote:
Hi there,
Is there any other way of approximating the mean rather than using the classic formula of summing and dividing by the number of observations? Thank you

You can see that the median value is 9.1 for 2011. For 2012, if you sort by ascending values, you can see that out of 19 values, only 3 are above 9, so the mean is unlikely to be higher. This is enough to answer the question.
­"The mean unemployment rate for these states in October 2012 was less than the median rate for October 2011."
you can also see that the Rate Change was negative for EVERY state. Therefore median or mean value (which are usually very close to each other) should decrease year-over-year. This strategy is a educted guess, not a unfailling proof.­­
You can't use this approximation (median ~ mean) when the distribution is very assymetrical, thou. Luckly, it is not the case here.
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