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The question is in the title. I'm mostly asking because I'm wondering whether this is subjective or not (this is regarding a sample like avg engineer salaries by state).

I know it's more appropriate to use the mean if the distribution is symmetric, or normal. But wouldn't all real life distributions be skewed, technically? What's a good rule of thumb here? When should I say, skewness value of $\pm \, x$ so the median is more representative of the average salary?

user162800
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  • https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/9987/when-does-the-amount-of-skew-or-prevalence-of-outliers-make-the-median-preferabl?rq=1 – David May 25 '17 at 21:07
  • If you're after "average" salary, you're better off looking at the median - that would be a question of what could the average person expect to earn, rather than what is the average of the salaries. – MotiNK May 25 '17 at 22:10
  • The question is only resolved by clearly figuring out what you even *mean* by the vague phrase "central tendency" in your particular case. This is generally resolved by considering in explicit terms what you want to find out from your data. [If on the other hand your aim is simply to offer some quick summary of the data *don't restrict yourself to any single measure*; if means and medians and modes are substantively different, that's an important thing to know in a summary.] – Glen_b May 25 '17 at 23:13

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