the.com/average
The number that describes almost no one but summarizes everyone.
means The single value you get by adding up all the numbers in a group and dividing by how many there are, used to stand in for the whole bunch.
from Comes through French 'avarie' from Arabic 'awariya', meaning damaged goods — this traces to maritime law, where if cargo had to be jettisoned or damaged to save a ship, the loss was divided proportionally among all merchants with goods aboard, rather than falling on one unlucky owner. That idea of spreading a cost evenly across a group drifted from ships' ledgers into mathematics, where 'average' came to mean any value spread evenly across a set of numbers.
- origin
- from maritime term for shared storm-damage costs
- weakness
- one billionaire makes a room average rich
- statistics joke
- half of people are below average, always
- median rival
- ignores outliers better but gets less credit