Even Excel has a function called “average”, whereas R uses the “mean” function for the same thing. Interestingly, R doesn’t have a function called “average”, because that term is far too ambiguous to statisticians. I think that summarizes pretty well who these tools were made for.
Comment on Life Expectancy is the age at which 50% of the of the population is expected to die before.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 week agoYes, when most people say average, they mean mean. Few people I’ve met know the other concepts even exist.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
TauZero@mander.xyz 1 week ago
The very wiki article quoted says average to mean mean (made explicit later). OP showerthought was calculating life expectancy in a way different than commonly understood. The first nitpick was correct.
poke@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
US public schools taught me that mean=average and the others were themselves, not that average describes any process to find a “normal” value. Just throwing that out there so people know why the conversation above happens so frequently.