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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.
The weighted harmonic mean is the preferable method for averaging multiples, such as the price–earnings ratio (P/E). If these ratios are averaged using a weighted arithmetic mean, high data points are given greater weights than low data points. The weighted harmonic mean, on the other hand, correctly weights each data point. [14]
Download as PDF; Printable version; ... for a sequence of positive weights w i we define the weighted power mean as ... For any q > 0 and non-negative weights summing ...
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]
Given a finite set of probability density functions p 1 (x), ..., p n (x), or corresponding cumulative distribution functions P 1 (x), ..., P n (x) and weights w 1, ..., w n such that w i ≥ 0 and Σw i = 1, the mixture distribution can be represented by writing either the density, f, or the distribution function, F, as a sum (which in both ...
This method can also be used to create spatial weights matrices in spatial autocorrelation analyses (e.g. Moran's I). [1] The name given to this type of method was motivated by the weighted average applied, since it resorts to the inverse of the distance to each known point ("amount of proximity") when assigning weights.
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 ().