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A weight function is a mathematical device used when performing a sum, integral, or average to give some elements more "weight" or influence on the result than other elements in the same set. The result of this application of a weight function is a weighted sum or weighted average .
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others.
Data can be binary, ordinal, or continuous variables. It works by normalizing the differences between each pair of variables and then computing a weighted average of these differences. The distance was defined in 1971 by Gower [1] and it takes values between 0 and 1 with smaller values indicating higher similarity.
The second form above illustrates that the logarithm of the geometric mean is the weighted arithmetic mean of the logarithms of the individual values. If all the weights are equal, the weighted geometric mean simplifies to the ordinary unweighted geometric mean. [1]
A weighted average, or weighted mean, is an average in which some data points count more heavily than others in that they are given more weight in the calculation. [6] For example, the arithmetic mean of 3 {\displaystyle 3} and 5 {\displaystyle 5} is 3 + 5 2 = 4 {\displaystyle {\frac {3+5}{2}}=4} , or equivalently 3 ⋅ 1 2 + 5 ⋅ 1 2 = 4 ...
For normally distributed random variables inverse-variance weighted averages can also be derived as the maximum likelihood estimate for the true value. Furthermore, from a Bayesian perspective the posterior distribution for the true value given normally distributed observations and a flat prior is a normal distribution with the inverse-variance weighted average as a mean and variance ().
Since the probabilities must satisfy p 1 + ⋅⋅⋅ + p k = 1, it is natural to interpret E[X] as a weighted average of the x i values, with weights given by their probabilities p i. In the special case that all possible outcomes are equiprobable (that is, p 1 = ⋅⋅⋅ = p k), the weighted average is given by the standard average. In the ...
In many cases the geometric mean is the best measure to determine the average growth rate of some quantity. For instance, if sales increases by 80% in one year and the next year by 25%, the result is the same as that of a constant growth rate of 50%, since the geometric mean of 1.80 and 1.25 is 1.50.