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Statistics vocabulary · Descriptive Statistics

Mean

Meaning in statistics, with examples

/miːn/nounCore term

In statistics, mean means: The sum of all the values divided by the number of values; the usual 'average' that describes the centre of a set of numbers.

In Turkish: ortalama, aritmetik ortalama

How it is used

The most reported statistic in any results section, usually next to the standard deviation: 'M = 24.6, SD = 3.1'. You calculate, compute or report the mean; the sample mean is written x̄ (read 'x-bar') and the population mean μ ('mu').

Example sentences

  1. The mean age of participants was 34.2 years (SD = 8.7).

  2. A few very high incomes pulled the mean well above the median.

Common collocations

  • calculate the mean
  • sample mean
  • arithmetic mean
  • mean score
  • means and standard deviations
  • medianThe middle value when the data are put in order from smallest to largest; with an even number of values, it is the mean of the two middle ones.
  • modeThe value that appears most often in a data set. A distribution can have one mode, two (bimodal) or several.
  • standard deviationA measure of how spread out values are around the mean; a small value means the data sit close to the mean, a large one means they are widely scattered.
  • outlierAn observation that lies unusually far from most of the other values in a data set; it may come from an error or from a genuinely unusual case.
  • weighted averageAn average in which some values count more than others: each value is multiplied by a weight, the results are added, and the total is divided by the sum of the weights.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Descriptive Statistics

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