That is, all six sub-periods have approximately six years with more than 21 deaths. The mean and median are widely used measures of central tendency. In general, sample means vary less than medians except in the case of a skewed distribution caused by extreme values. Figure suggests a highly skewed distribution of annual tropical-cyclone deaths for which the median better reflects the central tendency. As an illustration, the mean and median annual death toll over the 96-year period is 158 and 10, respectively.
Table lists the median number of deaths during each sub-period.
Here we observe a general increase over the century. Thus, while the annual mean number of deaths has fallen dramatically, the median number has risen. The result is striking when considering that there were fewer hurricane landfalls over the past several decades. Most tropical cyclone-related deaths occur with hurricanes. The relatively more frequent catastrophic events earlier in the century would likely make this percentage even higher over the entire century.