Answer :
Final answer:
The presence of B)outliers in gestation times can skew the mean value while leaving the median less affected, resulting in a large discrepancy between these two measures of central tendency.
Explanation:
The discrepancy between the mean value and the median gestation time in a survey can be largely attributed to the presence of outliers. Outliers are extreme values that are significantly different from the rest of the data. They can cause the mean (average) of a dataset to be skewed, while the median remains less affected, as it is the middle value of the dataset upon ordering. In the case of gestation times, if there were a significant number of preterm births (which are substantially shorter than full-term pregnancies), these could lower the mean gestation time, yet the median would reflect the more typical full-term period of around 39 to 40 weeks.