What does the phrase average number mean?

Answer 1

In simple terms, it's the middle number in a group of numbers.

There are three types of average - mean, median and mode. When most people talk about 'average' they mean the mean.

To get the mean, you add the numbers up, and then divide by the number of numbers.

e.g. the mean of 1, 3, 4, 4, 8

Add and you get 20

There are 5 numbers so 20 ÷ 5 = 4. So 4 is the mean or average

The median average is the number that is literally in the middle when the numbers are listed in order. For the set {1, 3, 4, 4, 8} the median is the third number which is 4.

If there is an even number of numbers, the median is the mean average of the middle two, eg for {1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9} the median is the mean average of 4 and 6: (4 + 6) ÷ 2 = 5.

The mode average is the most frequent; for the set {1, 3, 4, 4, 8} is it 4 as the number "4" appears twice but all the other numbers only appear once. There can be more than one mode if more than one number appears the most often. If every number appears the same amount of times, there is no mode.

The mode is the only average which does not have to be numerical. For example in a survey of favourite coffee (eg Americano, Cappuccino, Latte, Macchiato, Mocha, etc) one type of coffee may appear more often than the others - this would be the mode.