average

In mathematics, an average refers to a value that represents the central tendency of a list of numbers. The most common type is the arithmetic mean, calculated by summing all numbers and dividing by the count of numbers. This is often what people mean when they say "average".12

Other ways to find an average include the median, which is the middle value in a sorted list, and the mode, which is the number that appears most frequently. There are also more specialized means like the geometric mean, used for exponential growth, and weighted means, which assign different levels of importance to numbers. In statistics, the mean of a random variable is its expected value.13