Noun

Singular average

Plural averages

average (plural averages)

1. (arithmetic) The arithmetic mean.

   The average of 10, 20 and 24 is (10 + 20 + 24)/3 = 18.

2. (statistics) Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode (see Usage notes below).
3. (sports) An indication of a player's ability calculated from his scoring record, etc.

   batting average

In mathematics, an average, central tendency of a data set is a measure of the "middle" or "expected" value of the data set. There are many different descriptive statistics that can be chosen as a measurement of the central tendency of the data items. These include means, the median and the mode. Other statistical measures such as the standard deviation and the range are called measures of spread and describe how spread out the data is.

An average is a single value that is meant to typify a list of values. If all the numbers in the list are the same, then this number should be used. If the numbers are not all the same, an easy way to get a representative value from a list is to randomly pick any number from the list. However, the word 'average' is usually reserved for more sophisticated methods that are generally found to be more useful. In the latter case, the average is calculated by combining the values from the set in a specific way and computing a single number as being the average of the set.

The most common method is the arithmetic mean but there are many other types of averages, such as median (which is used most often when the distribution of the values is skewed with some small numbers of very high values, as seen with house prices or incomes).

Calculation