MEAN

The mean, also called the average, is the sum of all observations divided by the total number of observations. The common formula for the mean is:

The Σ (sigma) symbol represents the summation of the x observations; n, the total number of observations; and , the mean.

The mean is easy to calculate. It does not require preparing data before calculating it, but it does have its downside. If the number of observations is small, the dispersion between the lowest and highest values can skew the results of the calculation.

for Calculating the Mean

• Determine the number of observations.
• Take the observations.
• Sum the observations.
• Divide the sum of observations by the number of observations to derive the average.