The mean or average is the sum of all the data divided by the number
of data points. Mathematically it can be represented by the
following equation:
Xavg = ∑ (x /
n)
Where X avg is the mean or average, ∑x is the sum of all the data
and n is equal to the number of data points. We will now go over an
example.
Example
Let’s assume the following 10 numbers are the diameters of trees
in a treatment unit we sampled.
10.2, 6.5, 8.2, 9.6, 24.0, 16.6,
13.4 5.3, 6.7, 31.8
The average or mean is a good indication of the center of the
data if the data has a symmetric distribution. However if the
distribution of the data is not symmetric or there are extremely
high or low values the mean may not be the best choice for
describing the center of the data. |