Talk:Average

message: It looks like average and central tendency mean the same thing. If thats the case, they should be merged. The article on central tendency is so small that it would be an easy merge. Anyone agree? Fresheneesz 23:31, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 23:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge with central tendency

message: This article is ridiculously too complex for a subject so basic. I believe it needs to be completely rewritten to be understood by the average reader. -- Mwalcoff 03:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is very difficult to understand even though it is describing relatively simple mathematical concepts. I have a college level math education (Calculus II) and cannot decipher parts of this article ("symetric with permutations of the list"??). The section "Measures of central tendency" is especially problematic. What this section describes is actually rather simple, but it seems to be written in a sort of obfuscated math-speak. I'm reluctant to edit it myself for fear of introducing some generalization that the wiki math geeks will object to. Could someone with a good knowledge of the subject please rewrite this section in a way that is more understandable to the general public? Thanks! Kaldari 19:42, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Sorry, Amirab, but that's still way too complicated. The kind of person who needs to know what an average is is either quite young or uneducated with no math skills beyond arithmatic (and probably a reading level around that of a fifth-grader). -- Mwalcoff 01:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

text: This is a HUGE improvement. I have added your wording with some editing (mostly to keep wording consistent with other articles). Thanks for taking the time to write that up. I'm sure many school-kids will be grateful. Kaldari 22:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree it is a great improvement. I may fiddle with it a little. Thanks for your work on this page. -- Mwalcoff 02:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ok 2601:100:8800:2930:6C7E:CEDC:DE99:FA86 (talk) 02:36, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Technical tag

message: What about
 
e^{E(log(x_i)}
Is there a nice name for this average? If I for instance deal with log-normal distributed things it would be handy (now, in the log-normal case it happens to coincide with the median, but anyway it would be useful).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.252.189.234 (talk) 16:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the geometric average. Our article only gives the formula for a data set, but looking at the formula in the section Geometric mean#Relationship with arithmetic mean of logarithms it should be obvious this is the same.  --Lambiam 17:26, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a nifty name for this average? 

message: Average is a word more or less understood in a general way when a kid is 8-10 years old.  But not from this article, that's for certain.  Please simplify this article and put more complex stuff in linked articles.  Your help is greatly appreciated! --Foggy Morning (talk) 01:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: fwiw, I had advocated technical thoroughness under mean and simplicity here, for just that reason, but it didn't fly. I have trouble imagining someone looking under "average" to learn about geometric mean, which can merely be pointed to from "average" for further technical material. Unfortunately, I don't know of any WP:GETREAL :-( Pete St.John (talk) 19:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Where are the high-school math teachers when you need one? :-) Pete St.John (talk) 21:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Get real, please 

message: Will someone with an understanding of finance please correct the first example of Annualized return?
First, (1 − 10%) × (1 + 60%) = (1 + R) × (1 + R) is not a valid equation. The author is mixing percentages and real numbers. It should be:
(1-0.1)\cdot (1+0.6)=(1+R)^2.
Second, the solutions to that equation are -0.0513 and -1.9487, which can by no stretch of the imagination be transformed to 20% as stated in the article. In other words, the passage:
:For example, if there are two years in which the return in the first year is −10% and the return in the second year is +60%, then the annualized return, R, can be obtained by solving the equation: (1 − 10%) × (1 + 60%) = (1 + R) × (1 + R). The value of R that makes this equation true is 20%.
is gobbledygook.
Cheers Io (talk) 21:29, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The equation (1-0.1)\cdot (1+0.6)=(1+R)^2 has solutions R = 0.2 and R = −2.2. The author apparently identifies the percentage X% with the number X/100, which is not entirely unreasonable – for example, 3% of $1200 is the same as 3/100 of $1200. I've replaced the equality sign by "= (1 - 0.1) × (1 + 0.6) =" to make sure the intended meaning is clear.  --Lambiam 15:41, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Another thought related to this: you probably don't want this calculation to appear in this article about averages. It's not usually considered good math to average positive and negative percentages.  This is done in finance so that investors can compare sequential annual returns on various investments.  The average of percentages doesn't give an actual rate of return, just helps people compare investments. --65.78.215.243 (talk) 03:35, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Annualized return

message: I'm sorry but i don't understand the formula shown here already for this at all. I understand Summation notation but I belive that this is more right:
:AM=\frac{sigma_{i=1}^na_i}{n}.
where the mean = the sum of all the numbers from the 1st through to the nth (amount of number that you have) this is then divided by the amount of number you have.
I just don't get the 1 over n in the one already there, as far as I an see it doesn't work. Could whoever answers my quiery please explain it to me simply, without being rude. After all i'm intrigued in things like this. 95jb14 (talk) 19:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arithmatic mean 

message: The article says in the "arithmetic mean" section:
:Simply put, if n numbers are given, each number denoted by ai, where i=1, \dots ,n, the arithmetic mean is the sum of the ai's divided by n or
::AM=\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^na_i.
Is there anything simple about that equation when you consider that the readers are total lay people (even in terms of arithmetic)? Unfortunately, most people on the internet can barely multiply numbers over 3. And even if one considers the readership to be more mathematically inclined than that, this equation is still written out in a wildly convoluted way.
Where I'm from, "simple" would be as follows:
:To calculate the arithmetic mean of a set of numbers, add each and every individual number together and then divide that sum by the number of individual figures being averaged. For example, to find the average of the numbers 31, 86, 3 and 12, first add them together to obtain 132 (31 + 86 + 3 + 12 = 132). Then divide the total, 132, by the number of individual figures being averaged (in this case, there are 4 numbers being averaged). 132 divided by 4 equals 33. Therefore, the average of 31, 86, 3 and 12 is 33.
The word simple appeared over three times in this section. To begin with, that word should be eliminated. Phrases like "It is simple to [then] calculate..." should not appear in this article. Three out of the four times the word appeared, it was next to some incomprehensible calculation or a calculation that the reader could hardly understand why s/he was doing it. Simple to whom? Often, what's written as simple is far from it. And considering the article's basic grammar mistakes, it's a bit ludicrous to banty that word around.
If you want to talk about "simple," look at the basic grammatical mistakes I uncovered in this article. A comma and a conjunction separates two independent clauses not a dependent and independent one. All of this may be perceived as just plain insulting and certainly prohibitive to non-mathemically inclined people. I know we can do a bit better here. 68.161.240.184 (talk) 22:03, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree, it is good that you removed the term from the article. --Berland (talk) 07:22, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

text: The arithmetic mean, often simply called the mean, of two numbers, such as 2 and 8, is obtained by finding a value A such that 2 + 8 = A + A. One may find that A = (2 + 8)/2 = 5. Switching the order of 2 and 8 to read 8 and 2 does not change the resulting value obtained for A. The mean 5 is not less than the minimum 2 nor greater than the maximum 8. If we increase the number of terms in the list for which we want an average, we get, for example, that the arithmetic mean of 2, 8, and 11 is found by solving for the value of A in the equation 2 + 8 + 11 = A + A + A. One finds that A = (2 + 8 + 11)/3 = 7.
I'm no expert on the subject, but it seems that this explanation is too algebraic. Most readers will not understand or gain insight from the sentence, The arithmetic mean, often simply called the mean, of two numbers, such as 2 and 8, is obtained by finding a value A such that 2 + 8 = A + A. This may not seem so to some editors here, but it is actually confusing to someone without knowledge of algebra. Drop the variables (or even just the second variable) and it becomes intelligible to your audience. I am not suggesting that this entire paragraph be eliminated, but, rather, that it be fleshed out in lay language as well. Cheers, 68.161.240.184 (talk) 16:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simple arithmetic? 

message: Is there any different between "average" and "mean"? As I know is the same thing, so maybe these entries should be merged.
Could anyone tell me know if I'm wrong?
In Hebrew the meaning of "mean" and "average" is the same, but there is no link to the hebrew entry for "average" although there is a link from the "mean" page.
Deltafunction (talk) 13:32, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes there is a big difference: there are several different kinds of average but not all of them are means. And some of the other types of average are important.  For instance one of them, the median, is a more useful type of average than the mean to use when talking about skewed data -- things like the "average" price of housing or the "average" wage level -- where use of the mean would give a much higher figure than the "average" person would expect because of the influence of a very few astronomically high values. It would make about as much sense to merge this article with the "median" article as it would to merge it with the "mean" article which is to say "not much". So let's not merge the Average article with either of them. -- Derek Ross | Talk 15:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There are several types of central tendency, including median, but as far as I know a median is normually not referred to as 'average'. There are indeed several types of averages, including weighted average and harmonic average, artihmetic average, but I am not certain that average is more generic and that mean refers to the arithmetic average only. KKoolstra (talk) 11:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

text: I totally agree with you Diego Torquemada (talk) 17:02, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Despite similarities, they can still be used in very unique concepts.--Sky Attacker   Here comes the bird! 03:54, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

text: I agree with that. We should remove the over-detailed presentation of material on the mean from this article and replace it with a much simpler "layman's guide to means" and a link to the mean article where the detailed presentation is much more appropriate. We should also add back some of the material on the misuse of averages by special interest groups which used to form part of the article. -- Derek Ross | Talk 05:59, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Despite similarities, they can still be used in very unique concepts.--Sky Attacker   Here comes the bird! 06:11, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Despite the fact that the average and mean is almost the same i don't think they should be merged, this will cause confusion with other average-like terms such as mode and media;furthermore mean has a special place in statistics.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by BlueEditor (talk • contribs) 10:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  merge with mean? 

message: Here is a step by step way to work out the mean median and modal of a frquency table:
step 1: look at your table - Number of Hours TV  | Students (frequency)
                                    0            |       1
                                    1            |       5
                                    2            |       4
                                    3            |       8
                                    4            |       3
                                5 or more        |       1
step 2: we need to work out how many students took part in this survey 
        1+5+4+8+3+1= 22
step 3: to work out the mean we need to divide the total number of students by the number of numbers which in this case is 6 so we: 22/6= 3.666667 which when simplified is =3.7
step 4: the median is a mathematical term for the middle number. to work this out you divide the total number of students by 2 in this case it is 11 and 12, so we need to find the 11th and 12th students and the number of hours of TV which is they are both in the 3 hours catergory.
step 5: the modal is a mathematcal tern for the most common number, to work this out we look at the frequency coloumn first and the highest number here is 8. after finding this we look acroos to see where abouts that is on the other column in this case it is 3 hours.
step 5: now we need to make our answers clear 
        Mean: 3.7
        Median: 3 hours
        Mode: 3 hours 
That was a simple question on a frequency table they can be much harder but once you understand the mathematcal terms u will be able to tackle any question.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anfran94 (talk • contribs) 17:52, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  See How It's Done! 

message: In External links, add the following link: Averages: A New Approach.
This book provides additional information about averages and means, and it "contains neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to ... amount of detail ... ." (See Wikipedia's "External links": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links#What_should_be_linked). Smithpith (talk) 19:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it doesn't "provide additional information"; it creates new definitions, which are not accepted elsewhere.  It should not be listed unless it could be integrated into the article.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 20:55, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion 

message: By the time I wrote this the template had been removed. This is one thing that gives Wikipedia an advantage over any other mainstream encyclopidia. The commercial was not over and the problem was solved. Thanks, Otr500 (talk) 12:55, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Templates

message: I don't believe the definition of mode (or the listed procedure for calculating it) listed in this article is adequate.  For example, what is the mode of this set: {1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4} ?  The article seems to assume that "most frequent elements" either come singly, or in pairs.  70.247.169.94 (talk) 04:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of mode 

message: The Miscellaneous types section notes trimean and trimedian (and normalized mean). In an internet search I found definitions for trimean agreeing wth what is in the present article for trimean but almost nothing for trimedian, one of which was the same as what is in trimean and another which gave the following definitions:
*trimean (calculated by adding twice the sum of the mean to the sum of the 25th percentile and 75th percentile and then divide the sum by four); 
*trimedian (calculated by adding twice the sum of the median to the sum of the 25th percentile and 75th percentile and then divide the sum by four); 
so that here trimean disgrees with trimean. 
So does anyone have a decent source defining these things in some well established way (so that the redlinks can be solved)? The citation at the end of the sentence does not seem to mention them. Similarly for "normalized mean", for which what I found seems to relate to means of subgroups compared to the overall mean, which seems out of place at that point in the article. Melcombe (talk) 01:48, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Miscellaneous types 

message: Does anyone think this image at the top of the "Calculations" section adds anything helpful to the article? I had to keep staring at it just to figure out what's going on in it, and once I did I still can't seem to gain any insight from it. 
Can we remove it?  Duoduoduo (talk) 23:02, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a pretty picture but I agree it doesn't seem to give much insight into anything. I removed it. Dingo1729 (talk) 04:16, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we remove this image? 

message: Agree with moves. I agree with all the sectional move tags. I propose that these moves be made, and that this article should end up as (1) the current lede, (2) the etymology section, and (3) a list of links preceded by something like "Average can refer in various contexts to any of the following." Duoduoduo (talk) 14:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I mostly agree, but I would move some of the sections somewhat differently. I've moved "Solutions to variational problems" to Central tendency as suggested. I think we just have to be bold in deleting and moving material. I won't get upset if you revert or object to changes I make. I might disagree, but I won't get upset. Dingo1729 (talk) 03:40, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move tags: agree 

message: I have moved and re-written this section.
1. This section was originally inserted into the middle of the Pythagorean means sections. It clearly didn't belong there.
2. The difference between an antiderivative and an integral is rather technical, but antiderivative certainly shouldn't be used here.
3. The average may still be finite even if the function tends to infinity. What matters is that the integral is finite.
4. I have removed some nonsense, for example “The prove for this equation lies in the equation to calculate an approximation of an area under a curve without using integration, where we would multiply the y_{\text{ave}} of a curve by \Delta x we would be using."
5. If you read earlier entries in this talk page you will see that there are several complaints that this article is too mathematical. Someone else tagged sections to be merged elsewhere. We have very slowly been cleaning up the article and so I have tagged this section similarly. I still consider that this section is better covered in Mean with perhaps a very short note here. Dingo1729 (talk) 05:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Average of a function 

message: Splitting the article would negate the benefit of focusing, in one place, on the word "average". Use of the word "average" can be a source of confusion due to author lack of clear delineation of the particular mean (arithmetic, geometric, harmonic) being reported on and inconsistency of verbiage within the authors report (e.g., after stating the particular mean being used authors fall into the confusion trap of using the word "average" subsequently). Such inconsistency leads to miscommunication and confusion. The Wikipedia article helps address these and related literature short comings. It also ties into one neat article the basic 'measures of central tendency' parameters.
Expansion of the basic parameter information of this article by other articles is a useful way to go. Furthermore. in a more general context, some repetition of information in various articles is beneficial. How to distribute related information across articles and manage repetition is an important topic unto its self. Managing repetition with an eye to erring on the side of more rather than less in a reasonable manner is the way to go.
Tegangwer (talk) 04:10, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Splitting the Average article 

message: Is this still a "start class" article?  Seems pretty decent to me.  -- PeterLFlomPhD (talk) 22:10, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I moved it to a "C" class. Tal Galili (talk) 19:00, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Start class"? 

message: Hello,
I've added a new "history" section, with a "origin" sub topic. I didn't figure out how to make the citations work for this section. Please help me clean it up. Thanks. Tal Galili (talk) 18:59, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with the history section 

message: Substituted at 19:46, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Currently the lead says
:In colloquial language, an average is the sum of a list of numbers divided by the number of numbers in the list. Most of the time this is used in finding a number. In mathematics and statistics, this would be called the arithmetic mean.  In statistics, mean, median, and mode are all known as measures of central tendency.
The first and third sentences says that "average" means the arithmetic mean, contradicting the rest of the article, which gives a variety of alternative uses.
The second sentence is vacuous and was probably a soft vandalism.
The last sentence introduces two other concepts without saying whether they are averages.
So I'm going to rewrite the lead consistently with the rest of the article. Loraof (talk) 16:12, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why I'm rewriting the lead 

message: The last sentence from the lead is "in colloquial usage any of these [mean, median, mode] might be called an average value. " is utter rubbish.  Only an idiot would use the term average to refer to median or mode.  There is no way that this is colloquial usage of the word "average."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 135.23.120.120 (talk) 20:42, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the lead is arrant nonsense