I was looking up the average networth of 30 year olds in the United States and it said: “The average net worth is $122,000 and the median net worth is $35,112” my brain is too smooth please help.
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There are different types of averages. Usually when we say “average” we’re talking about the mean – specifically the arithmetic mean. This is the one where you add up all the numbers and divide by the number of numbers. Say someone had 5 kids, aged 3,4,4,4,10. Then 3+4+4+4+10=25. 25÷5=5, so the mean age is 5.
Another type of average is the median. For this, you line them all up in order (like we have above) and the median is just the middle one. Since there are 5 kids, the 3rd is the middle one. The 3rd is 4 years old, so the median age is 4.
The mean takes in all values, but this also means it can be skewed by outliers. Say the kid was 20 rather than 10. Suddenly the mean is 7, but the median stays the same.
There are some other versions too. The mode is the most common value, again 4 in this example. There’s also the geometric mean where you multiply the numbers together, then take the n-th root. So 3×4×4×4×10=1920. 5th root of 1920 is about 4.5. It’s a rarer one, but has some applications in physics.
Anyway, tldr, the *mean* average uses all the data. The median tells you about the middle.
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