Mean/Average Examples

Juanita has $10, Stefan has $15, and Jorge has $11. If we redistribute the money so that each person gets the same amount, how much money will each person receive?

We have 10 + 15 + 11 = 36 dollars total. Dividing by 3, we see that each person should receive $12. To recap: that's three socialists with $12 each.

The scores students received on the test were

60, 75, 84, 95, 96.

What was the mean of their scores?

If we redistribute the points so that everyone has the same score, that score is the mean. We can't imagine why a teacher would do this, but let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she has her reasons. To redistribute, we add up the scores and divide by 5 (the number of scores). The sum of the scores is

60 + 75 + 84 + 95 + 96 = 410

and dividing by 5 gives us

410÷ 5 = 82.

The mean score was 82.