Definition of Arithmetic Mean
Miscellanea / / July 04, 2021
By Florencia Ucha, on Apr. 2010
Result that arises from adding values and dividing them by the number of addends that participate
At the request of the Mathand of the Statistics, the Half Arithmetic, popularly known as average too, turns out to be the finite set of numbers that is equal to the sum of all values divided by the number of addends involved.
If the set in question is a random sample, as the individuals in a population statistic, it will be called the sample mean and it will become one of the main sample statistics.
For example, if I want to know the Arithmetic Mean or average that I have in a certain subject at school or university, I only have to add the numbers of each of the marks that I obtained in the exams and divide them by the number of tests, that is, if my marks during the year were 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10, the arithmetic mean or average in question will be 6,80.
Whenever we want to obtain an average we must have two quantities of which we can precisely achieve their midpoint. We will always need other figures because a figure cannot be averaged against itself.
In the case that there are several figures, we must, as we said, add them to all and more later divide them by the number of numbers involved, that is, if there were five figures, divide them by that number.
Used in climate, economy, human resources and for statistics
And the same procedure that we mentioned can only be transferred to other areas and questions to precisely obtain the averages, including temperatures. It turns out to be very common that at the request of the weather calculations are made to know the average of the temperature during a season of the year. What is done then is to add the temperatures during the period and then divide them in order to achieve the average that will exist during that time studied.
Also in economy and finance, the average is used to find the average of the gains or losses of a business, for the inflation rate that affects the economy of a country, the cost of living, between others.
And in the workplace, the average or arithmetic mean is often used to perform calculations linked to the days worked by an employee and thus know how many days he actually worked and be able to make the payment corresponding to his work.
On the other hand, the arithmetic mean is widely used to carry out statistics in sensitive sectors and once the results are known, it can be developed and implement policies aimed at solving problems in these areas. Let's think about the education, to know if the level of knowledge of a course is good or bad, an average of the marks that obtain the students and thus know if they are at a good level or not, and if necessary to implement measures that improve.
One of the disadvantages of the Arithmetic Mean is that it will be modified by those extreme values, that is, very high values tend to increase it. and on the contrary, those that are too low tend to reduce it, which, of course, is quite harmful since it can stop being representative.
The properties of this state that the Arithmetic Mean of a set of positive numbers will be equal to or greater than the geometric mean, which is the root nth of the product of the numbers and on the other hand that the arithmetic mean will be between that maximum value and the minimum value of the data set in question.
So, we must make it clear that the result that the average calculation of something brings us will not always coincide with reality and that is why it is spoken in terms of the average.
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