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StatisticsDescriptive Statistics

If the Mean Is Greater Than the Median, What Does It Mean?

For the introductory multiple-choice question, mean greater than median suggests a positively skewed or right-skewed distribution because large values pull the mean toward the right tail.

Question

In a dataset, if the mean is greater than the median, what can you infer about the data distribution?(a) The distribution is positively skewed(b) The distribution is negatively skewed(c) The distribution is symmetric(d) The distribution cannot be determined from these statistics

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Evidence boundary

The selected answer follows the introductory descriptive-statistics convention tested by the cited NIET question. Mean greater than median is evidence consistent with right skew, but those two summary values alone do not prove the exact shape of every possible distribution.