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is a tag applied to 3 questions. It currently has no tag wiki, and the tag excerpt reads

This challenge is related to average or arithmetic mean.

Currently, this is a very specific tag which is arguably covered by the tag. However, nothing in the very short tag wiki explicitly says that it covers averages, and it could be beneficial to have a separate tag for challenges around averages.

"average" does have more than one mathematical meaning however - the median and mode are both averages, and there are many different means than just the arithmetic mean. The tag could reasonably be expanded to include these as well.

There are 259 questions that mention "average", 23 that mention "arithmetic mean" and 391 that mention "mean", none of which have the tag. If we decide to keep, or even expand, the tag, it could require some effort to properly find and then retag relevant questions

I brought this up in chat with no real conclusion. Currently, is a suggested synonym of \${}^\dagger\$. However, it is still being voted on, so 3 negative votes could reject this (I recommend that no one "jumps the gun" until a decision is made, tag synonyms are enough of a hassle without having to do them twice).

Therefore, of the options below, what should we do with the tag?

  • Synonymise it with , and (optionally) remove it from the 3 questions it is currently on,
  • Expand its scope, edit its tag wiki and begin applying it to more challenges,
    • What should the expanded scope cover?
  • Do nothing and leave the tag as it is, or
  • Do something else?

\$\dagger\$ Mostly by mistake - I didn't think I had the required score in to suggest it, and expected to be blocked from suggesting it

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1 Answer 1

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Synonymize with

According to Wikipedia, an average is "a single number taken as representative of a non-empty list of numbers".

Limiting the scope of to "arithmetic mean" would be way too narrow for a tag. Accepting the broader meaning would make it a branch of descriptive statistics, namely the central tendency of univariate data. But even though many challenges involve calculating such a measure, I don't feel like it is used as a core part of a challenge that often (so it is actually worth using or even ).

I suggest to make a synonym of , and use for challenges whose core is about calculating a kind of central tendency.

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