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Whoa that's wrong. Average == mean. Always. In Excel, in NumPy, the average() function calculates mean.
by starpilot 8y ago
Whoa that's wrong. Average == mean. Always. In Excel, in NumPy, the average() function calculates mean.
- dragonwriter 8y agoNo, it's not. Average can mean mean (any of them: e.g., geometric or harmonic as well as arithmetic), median, or mode. Usually, people using “average” outside of a specialized context where some other average is the conventional default mean arithmetic mean, but that's not the only thing it can mean, and, frankly, it's better just to avoid using “average” to refer to any summary statistic and just use the specific name for the statistic you want to use.
- pfarnsworth 8y agoYou are 100% incorrect. Go look it up in the dictionary. Mean == Average, by definition. Median is the middle point of a set, and mode is completely different, it's the most frequent number in a set. In no shape of form is "mode" ever confused with "average".
- zwily 8y agoThe first few dictionaries I looked at online said, in the first or second definition for “average”, something about it being “mean, median, or mode”: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/average https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/average https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/average https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/average I agree that arithmetic mean is usually what’s meant, but clearly median and mode can also be rightfully called “averages”.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoI like Merriam-Webster's first definition, which eschews any math terms and defines it as the value most representative of a set of data