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In calculus, and especially multivariable calculus, the mean of a function is loosely defined as the average value of the function over its domain. In one variable, the mean of a function f ( x ) over the interval ( a , b ) is defined by: [ 1 ]
In statistics, the assumed mean is a method for calculating the arithmetic mean and standard deviation of a data set. It simplifies calculating accurate values by hand. Its interest today is chiefly historical but it can be used to quickly estimate these statistics.
In some circumstances, mathematicians may calculate a mean of an infinite (or even an uncountable) set of values. This can happen when calculating the mean value of a function (). Intuitively, a mean of a function can be thought of as calculating the area under a section of a curve, and then dividing by the length of that section.
If the sampling distribution is normally distributed, the sample mean, the standard error, and the quantiles of the normal distribution can be used to calculate confidence intervals for the true population mean.
A simple way to calculate the mean of a series of angles (in the interval [0°, 360°)) is to calculate the mean of the cosines and sines of each angle, and obtain the angle by calculating the inverse tangent. Consider the following three angles as an example: 10, 20, and 30 degrees.
Average of chords. In ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean – the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list.
The arithmetic mean can be similarly defined for vectors in multiple dimensions, not only scalar values; this is often referred to as a centroid. More generally, because the arithmetic mean is a convex combination (meaning its coefficients sum to ), it can be defined on a convex space, not only a vector space.
Because the median is simple to understand and easy to calculate, while also a robust approximation to the mean, the median is a popular summary statistic in descriptive statistics. In this context, there are several choices for a measure of variability : the range , the interquartile range , the mean absolute deviation , and the median ...