1.3 The arithmetic mean

Another important measure of location is the arithmetic mean. (Pronounced arithmetic.)

There are other kinds of mean, such as the geometric mean and the harmonic mean, but in this course we shall be using only the arithmetic mean; the word mean will therefore normally be used for arithmetic mean.

Note that in calculating the mean, the order in which the values are summed is irrelevant.

For a larger batch size, you may find it helpful to set out your calculations systematically in a table. However, in practice the raw data are usually fed directly into a computer or calculator. In general, it is a good idea to check your calculations by reworking them. If possible, use a different method in the reworking; for example, you could sum the numbers in the opposite order.

The formula ‘’ can be expressed more concisely as follows. Referring to the values in the batch by , the ‘sum’ can be written as . Here is the Greek (capital) letter Sigma, the Greek version of S, and is used in statistics to denote ‘the sum of’. Also, the symbol is often used to denote the mean – and as you have already seen in stemplots, can be used to denote the batch size. (Some calculators use keys marked and to produce the sum and the mean of a batch directly.)

Using this notation,

can be written as

In this course we shall normally round the mean to one more figure than the original data.