In mathematics, an average, or central tendency[1] of a data set is a measure of the "middle" value

of the data set.

There are many different descriptive statistics that can be chosen as a measurement of the central
tendency of the data items. These include arithmetic mean, the median and the mode. Other
statistical measures such as the standard deviation and the range are called measures of spread and
describe how spread out the data is.

An average is a single value that is meant to typify a list of values. If all the numbers in the list are
the same, then this number should be used. If the numbers are not the same, the average is
calculated by combining the values from the set in a specific way and computing a single number
as being the average of the set.

The most common method is the arithmetic mean but there are many other types of central
tendency, such as median (which is used most often when the distribution of the values is skewed
with some small numbers of very high values, as seen with house prices or incomes).[2]