arithmetic mean (average)

The sum of a series of observations divided by the number of observations. Symbol: $x ̄$ . It can be calculated by the formula:

$x ̄ = ∑ x i n$

Note:

All summations are taken from 1 to $n$ . Note that the arithmetic mean is an unbiased estimate of the population mean, i.e. $μ$ is the limiting value for $x ̄$ , as $n → ∞$ .

Source:

PAC, 1994, 66, 595 (Nomenclature for the presentation of results of chemical analysis (IUPAC Recommendations 1994)) on page 599