Whenever you try to describe a large data set with a single number, you lose a lot of information, like you said. Having more measurements helps, but I think t

Whenever you try to describe a large data set with a single number, you lose a lot of information, like you said. Having more measurements helps, but I think the larger point is that we don't have to do this anymore, we could publish the entire data set instead. Without computers, this would be a waste of paper, but transmitting the data electronically is cheap. So why argue over the measurements? Publish the data and my software can give me any measurement I'm interested in.