Activity 1 : From the above Table if the students will be asked to find the mean by taking each of x i (i.e., 17.5, 32.5, and so on) as ‘ a ’. What do they observe? They will find that the mean determined in each case is the same, i.e., 62. Because as we find the difference of assumed mean a from each of x i and finally when we add the a in the formula it balances the differences occurred at the first step. DERIVATION OF FORMULA OF ASSUMED MEAN METHOD . Proof: Let x 1 , x 2 ,. . ., x n are observations with respective frequencies f 1 , f 2 , . . ., f n , respectively. Taking deviations about an arbitrary point, 'a' we have = - a, i = 1,2,3,...n. Or, , i = 1,2,3,...n. Or, Or, = Or, [ ] = [ ] Or [ ] = = - a Or, =a + (proved) So, we can say that the value of the mean obtained does not depend on the choice of ‘ a ’