Practice Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) in Statistics

Use these practice problems to test your method after reviewing the concept explanation and worked examples.

Quick Recap

The Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) is the average of the absolute distances between each data point and the mean of the dataset. It measures how spread out data values are from the center, with larger MAD values indicating more variability.

Find how far each number is from the mean (ignoring +/-), then average those distances. It tells you: on average, how far is a typical value from the center?

Example 1

easy
Find the mean absolute deviation (MAD) of the data set: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12.

Example 2

medium
Two data sets: A = {10, 10, 10, 10, 10} and B = {2, 6, 10, 14, 18}. Both have a mean of 10. Calculate the MAD for each and explain what it tells you.

Example 3

medium
The heights (in cm) of 6 plants are: 12, 15, 14, 18, 13, 16. Calculate the MAD and interpret the result in context.

Example 4

hard
A teacher claims that adding the same constant to every value in a data set does not change the MAD. Test this claim with the data set {5, 10, 15, 20, 25} by adding 100 to each value and comparing the MADs.
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