DescTools (version 0.99.19)

MeanAD: Mean Absolute Deviation From a Center Point

Description

Calculates the mean absolute deviation from a center point, typically the sample mean or the median.

Usage

MeanAD(x, FUN = mean, na.rm = FALSE)

Arguments

x

a vector containing the observations.

FUN

the name of a function to be used as center. Can as well be a self defined function. Default is mean.

na.rm

a logical value indicating whether or not missing values should be removed. Defaults to FALSE.

Value

Details

The MeanAD function calculates the mean absolute deviation from the mean value (or from another supplied center point) of x, after having removed NA values (if requested): $$\frac{1}{n} \cdot \sum_{i=1}^{n}\left | x_{i}-c \right | \; \; \; \textup{where} \; c=mean(x) \; \textup{or} \; c=med(x)$$

It exists primarily to simplify the discussion of descriptive statistics during an introductory stats class.

See Also

mad

Examples

x <- runif(100)
MeanAD(x)

speed <- c(58, 88, 40, 60, 72, 66, 80, 48, NA)
MeanAD(speed)
MeanAD(speed, na.rm=TRUE)


# using the median as centerpoint
x <- c(2,3,5,3,1,15,23)

MeanAD(x, FUN=mean)
MeanAD(x, FUN=median)

# define a fix center
MeanAD(x, 4)