Which mean to use and when? - Cross Validated So we have arithmetic mean (AM), geometric mean (GM) and harmonic mean (HM) Their mathematical formulation is also well known along with their associated stereotypical examples (e g , Harmonic mea
mean - Averaging variances - Cross Validated I need to obtain some sort of "average" among a list of variances, but have trouble coming up with a reasonable solution There is an interesting discussion about the differences among the three
mean - How do I calculate confidence intervals for a non-normal . . . You can just use a standard confidence interval for the mean: Bear in mind that when we calculate confidence intervals for the mean, we can appeal to the central limit theorem and use the standard interval (using the critical points of the T-distribution), even if the underlying data is non-normal
Mean absolute deviation vs. standard deviation - Cross Validated After calculating the "sum of absolute deviations" or the "square root of the sum of squared deviations", you average them to get the "mean deviation" and the "standard deviation" respectively The mean deviation is rarely used
Should I use median instead of mean for nonparametric distributions? The mean has a proper interpretation outside normal distributions, and it can have problems, such as its vulnerability to outliers (which in some applications is more of a problem than in others) One cannot generally say that the mean should or should not be used if we don't have a normal distribution It depends on what you are interested in