Chapter 2: Q55E (page 98)

Professional athletes’ salaries.The salaries of superstar professional athletes receive much attention in the media. The multimillion-dollar long-term contract is now commonplace among this elite group. Nevertheless, rarely does a season pass without negotiations between one or more of the players’ associations and team owners for additional salary and fringe benefits for allplayers in their particular sports.
a.If a players’ association wanted to support its argument for higher “average” salaries, which measure of central tendency do you think it should use? Why?
b.To refute the argument, which measure of central tendency should the owners apply to the players’ salaries? Why?

Short Answer

Expert verified

Median
Mean

Step by step solution

Identifying the best measure of central tendency to support the argument

Suppose the players’ association wants to support its argument for a higher average salary. They should use the median because the median gives you the centermost value and would therefore give us the appropriate average.

Lower median as the average will prompt the owners to increase the median and thus increase the average.

Finding the best measure of central tendency to refute the argument

The owners will use the mean because there are very high chances that the data might be skewed to the right and would pull the mean to the right and make it larger than the median value.

By using the mean in skewed data, the owners can refute the argument by showing the already higher average.