“Average” is the layperson’s way of saying arithmetic mean. It is one of the measures of central tendency and is determined by taking the sum of all the data points in the set divided by the number of data points in the set.

Equation to Determine the Average

Average is a measure of central tendency and gives some insight into the nature of the data. Be careful, though, as the average can be misleading if there are outliers.

Take the following data set:

10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 1000

From looking at it, you can tell that the typical value is going to be 10. But the average value of this set is 100. (1,100/11)

Two other values of central tendency are needed to get a full picture. The mode is the most frequent value (10) and the median is the middle value (also 10). If you were just told the average, mode, and median for this set, you’d probably want to dive deeper into the data set to see what is going on.

See Also: Mean