Fighting for the Center

A game for two players or teams using playing cards to alter a data set to fix the measures of central tendency to a given value.

Object of the Game

Alter the data set so that the mean, median, mode, and/or range match your hidden objective.

Components

Two decks of cards with the Kings and Queens removed. Jacks are 0, Aces are 1s. Red cards are negative, and black cards are positive.

Set-up

Each player takes 4 cards from the deck and keeps them secret. Then place six cards face up in the middle of the table. These cards represent the data set. Then deal a hand of five cards to each player. Keep these cards separate from your goal cards.

In this data set, the mode is +2, the median is +2, and the mean is +1 .

Play

On a players turn, they draw a card and then either play a card or discard a card. A card is played on top of a card already out as a replacement. If, at the end of the players turn, one of the measures of central tendency matches one of their hidden cards, they can reveal it and claim it. However, each of mean, median, and mode can only be claimed once per game. So if mean is use to claim the first goal card, only median or mode could be used for the others.

The mode cannot be claimed unless there are at least two copies of that number.

If a player chooses, they may pass their turn so that they can swap one of their goal cards with one of the cards from their hand. If they do, they do not draw a card or play a card, and they cannot claim a goal.

End of game

The game ends when one player has claimed three goal cards.

Variant(s):

Data Set Size: Instead of just playing on top of cards, you can play next to cards to increase the size of the data set. You can also remove a data point by playing a card face-down on top of one of the piles. There can be a maximum of 10 and a minimum of 4 data points.

Single Measure: Play using only mean (or only median, or only mode).

Here two data points were appended and one was removed. Now the mean is 5/6 and the median is 1.