By definition, an arithmetic average, or mean, will always have some values above and some below it, otherwise it would not be an average. Thus, it is not surprising or shocking if you read that many households in Australia produce more than the average quantity of domestic rubbish. It is to be expected. Mind you, such a statistic might also be informative - if rubbish production is known to be above average in certain suburbs, these might be targeted by waste reduction campaigns. In this way, it might be possible to lower the overall average.
Averages can be misleading.
Statisticians remind themselves that people can disappear without trace in a lake with an average depth of 2 centimetres - if they happen to fall into the small part of it that is 10 metres deep. Averages can give the wrong impression if they are taken from a set of numbers with a few very high or very low values. Averages are measured in different ways - confusing these can also lead to error. The most commonly used average is the mean . This is the sum of all the values in a series divided by the total number of values.