Comparing Salaries: Nutritionist vs. Business Analyst (Discussion)

This discussion board post presents an analysis of nutritionist and business analyst salaries. One student researches and calculates the mean and median salaries for nutritionists using data from various sources, identifying a discrepancy in the original calculation and suggesting corrections. The other student calculates the mean and median salaries for entry-level business analysts across different cities, considering the impact of cost of living. The post also includes feedback on the students' work, highlighting the importance of data accuracy, the influence of location on salaries, and the appropriate use of mean and median as measures of central tendency. The discussion emphasizes the significance of considering data skewness when choosing between mean and median.

Joshua Lucchesi posted May 2, 2017 6:16 PM
For this discussion I researched the salary of nutritionists. I rounded each amount to the nearest
tenth.
Bureau of Labor Statistics: $58.9k
salary.com: $58.4k
payscale.com: $29.3k / $74.0k
money.usnews.com: $35.2k / $81k
indeed.com: $60.7k
allp.com: $69.6k
allalliedhealthschools.com: $55.3k
owlguru.com: $58.6k
Mean:
(29.3+35.2+55.3+58.4+58.6+58.9+60.7+69.6+74.0+81.0) / 10
= 581 / 10
= $58.1k
Median:
29.3,35.2,55.3,58.4,[58.6,58.9],60.7,69.6,74,81
(58.6+58.9) / 2
117.5 / 2
= $58.8k

The better measure of central tendency is the median salary of $58.8k a year. The median shows
an increase amount compared to the mean salary of $58.1k a year.
Hi Joshua, you have worked well on this problem with a little mistake. While adding the salary
of nutritionists you have used two salaries from payscale.com and money.usnews.com which
leads to the incorrect value of the actual mean and median. There are three ways to deal with this
situation, first is to take the smallest value, second depend on the belief if you believe that the
largest value seems more appropriate in comparison with others take that one and the last one
which is the best is take average of the two and use them for further calculations.
Now suppose that the calculated mean value and median are correct, then you mentioned median
would be a better measure, here you did a great job because when the value of the mean is less
that means the data is skewed and in that condition median would be a better measure of central
tendency.
 Brittany Baisley posted May 2, 2017 9:55 PM
When calculating the mean and median salaries of a business analyst, I focused more so
on gathering information from different cities. Most of the time when salaries are
calculated, it is based on the cost of living in their area. If someone lives in New York
than Dallas, it is more likely for them to receive a higher salary because of their cost of
living. According to the measures of central tendency, the mean is used for an average
estimate and median is used to find the middle value. Below I calculate the mean and
median for an entry level business analyst in 10 different cities.
Mean
66 + 67 + 67 + 63 + 59 + 63 + 64 + 60 + 65 + 66 = 640 / 10 = 64
Median
59 + 60 + 63 + 63 + 64 + 65 + 66 + 66 + 67 + 67

The average (mean) is $64K within the country as an entry level business analyst. The
median is $64.5K between the different cities. I think that the best measure of central
tendency for this scenario would be the median. It is less affected by outliers within the
collection, for example if one of the salaries changed to a significantly lower amount,
then the mean would drop which makes it hard to represent at times. Whereas the median
is more precise and accurate to its data. Usually when there is an even number of data and
the median falls in the middle of two numbers, the value is higher than the mean.
Reference:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-business-analyst-salary-
SRCH_IL.0,7_IM167_KO8,24.htm
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/austin-business-analyst-salary-
SRCH_IL.0,6_IM60_KO7,23.htm
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Business_Intelligence_(BI)_Analyst/Salary/
aab7fcd5/Entry-Level-Dallas-TX
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/los-angeles-entry-level-business-analyst-salary-
SRCH_IL.0,11_IM508_KO12,40.htm
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/miami-entry-level-business-analyst-salary-
SRCH_IL.0,5_IM558_KO6,34.htm
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/seattle-entry-level-business-analyst-salary-
SRCH_IL.0,7_IM781_KO8,36.htm
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-entry-level-business-analyst-salary-
SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,42.htm
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/washington-dc-entry-level-business-analyst-salary-
SRCH_IL.0,13_IM911_KO14,42.htm
Hi Brittany,
Great job, you have explained everything in a precise manner. You approach of
collecting the data from different cities is remarkable. Of course you are right about the
salary calculations are mostly based on the cities’ cost of living, those who are living in
metropolitan cities are expected to get more salaries than those living in other cities. I
would like to add some comments about mean and median, we can describe them as; the
mean is the value around which most of the values in a data set are supposed to be and
the median is the value which divides the data into two halves.
Although your approach is good, but we cannot rely only on ten city data to say
something about a country mean or median salary values, I hope you understand the

reason behind. Also one thing I want you to add is the references you have given are only
for 8 cities, but as you have mentioned 10 cities salary for business analyst so that needs
to be corrected.