What are the three ways to calculate average?

Answer 1

The three averages are:

Mean: Add all the numbers together and divide by how many of them there are.

Median: Sort the numbers into order (from least to greatest); then:

If there is an odd number of numbers then the median is the middle one; otherwise

there is an even number of numbers and the median is the mean average of the two numbers in the middle

Mode: Count up how many times each data item appears; the mode is the one, or ones, which occur the most often. If every data item occurs the same number of times there is no mode.

Example: for the numbers {1, 16, 2, 9, 2, 6}

Mean: (1 + 16 + 2 + 9 + 2 + 6) ÷ 6 = 36 ÷ 6 = 6

Median: {1, 16, 2, 9, 2, 6} → {1, 2, 2, 6, 9, 16}; as there are 6 numbers the median is the mean of the middle two (the 3rd and 4th numbers): median: (2 + 6) ÷ 2 = 4

Mode: From the sorting for the median the number 2 appears twice and every other number appears once; thus mode is 2.

Note:

The mode is the only average which does not have to be numerical. Doing a survey of people's favourite drinks, Tea may occur more often than any other drink, thus Tea would be the mode average.

Also, as noted above, the mode does not have to have a single value. In surveying drinks, Tea and Coffee may occur equally often (more than any other drink), making Tea and Coffee both the mode average.