Greetings! Dr. Young told me that you are available to help us with some questions we have about a study we’re doing.

We’re conducting this year’s study on obesity in America; we do this every year to get some idea of whether Americans are getting healthier or not. One way we measure this is to track Body Mass Index, or BMI.

I’m specifically doing research on American men ages 50-59, of which there are about 15 million in America. Due to the study size, we used a telephone survey in which we asked everyone their height and weight in order to calculate their BMIs. We surveyed 30,000 men, 50-59 years old over the phone.

I need to report some statistics on the BMIs we calculated to summarize the data we received in our telephone survey. In particular, I need to report some sort of “average.” I remember from taking statistics a while back that mean, mode, and median are three values that might have something to do with "averages." Here are the numbers for our study:

• Mean = 29.1
  
• Median = 28.2
  
• Mode = 26.1

Can you help me determine which of these measures I should report to give a clear picture of my data and tell me why you would choose that measure or combination of measures? Maybe you could also provide an example to help jog my memory.

Thanks,
Roger Snow