Which of the following is NOT a measure of central tendency?

Variance is indeed not a measure of central tendency; rather, it is a measure of variability or dispersion within a data set. Measures of central tendency, such as mean, median, and mode, serve to summarize a set of data by identifying a central point around which the data clusters.

The mean is the arithmetic average of a set of values, calculated by adding all the numbers together and dividing by the count of those numbers. The median is the middle value when a data set is ordered from smallest to largest. If there is an even number of values, the median is determined by taking the average of the two middle numbers. The mode, on the other hand, refers to the value that appears most frequently in a data set.

In contrast, variance calculates how far each number in the data set is from the mean and thus measures how spread out the numbers are. It provides insights into the distribution and variability of the data, but it does not indicate a central value. Therefore, variance stands apart from the other three options, which are all focused on locating the center of a data distribution.