What term describes a value that skews the mean of a set of data and can misrepresent the overall group?

The term that describes a value that skews the mean of a set of data and can misrepresent the overall group is an outlier. Outliers are values that are significantly higher or lower than the other values in a dataset. When calculating the mean, which is the average of all data points, the presence of an outlier can distort this average, leading to conclusions that may not accurately reflect the general trend or central point of the data.

In practical terms, if you're assessing property values in a neighborhood and one property is extraordinarily expensive due to unique features or market conditions, this outlier can raise the mean price, making it appear that properties in that area are more expensive on average than they actually are. This can mislead buyers or appraisers if they rely solely on the average without considering the impact of that outlier.

Central tendency refers to measures like the mean, median, and mode that summarize a set of data. While it relates to how data are grouped around a central point, it does not specifically describe the distorting effect of extreme values. A measure of dispersion helps to understand how spread out the data is but does not inherently indicate that any individual data point is skewing the results. Normal distribution describes the symmetrical, bell-shaped curve