Sometimes average is not the most usefull summary statistic.
To describe the location of the center of a sample of data, we usually consider the following indexes:
- Mean
- Median
Depending on the type of data other indexes could be even more informative:
- Half point: (Max-Min)/2
- Trimmed mean
- Geometric mean
Moreover, in occasions, the location of the center does not add much information, whereas a measure of the data sparsity is more meaningful. To quantify dispersion we usually consider the following indexes:
- Standard deviation
- Variance
- Range
- Interquartilic Range