In statistics the name Arithmetic Mean is given to what would be the average in a Data set, eg, the mean/average of the set of numbers 4, 8, 12 is (4+8+12)/3 = 8.

If we wanted to know how commom blonde hair was in a population, we would be interested in the "relative frequency", that is, if we take a random
sample of the population of say size 1000. What is the observed frequency of blonde haired people in the sample, if we found 500 with blonde hair, the
relative frequency would be the ratio, 500(number of blonde haired people) divided by 1000(the sample size). 500/1000, this = 0.5.
We could then say, the "relative frequency" of our sample is 0.5, and if we apply this to the population from where we took the random sample,
if this were of say size, 40,000, we could then say that we would expect the number of people in this population to have blonde hair, would be the
sample relative frequency 0.5 multiplied by the population size 40,000, this = 20,000 people with blonde hair.

In this example, we would say blonde hair was very common because half of the population is expected to have blonde hair, from the random sample taken.
We could say, the probability of any individual in the populaion to have blond hair = 0.5, or if we pick out an individual from this population there is a 50%
chance they will be blonde.

I believe the word "average" can be used as in a mathematical context, Arithmetical Mean, and subjectively when a personal assessment is made, say a painting, one
person may say the artist's work is average, another person may say it is very good, more of an opinion.

Does this have something to do with the misuse of "average" when people fill out the "body type" box on their profiles?

I bet it does..


There should be a chart or reference pictures to avoid confusion.

Well average does have three mathematical definitions- mean, median and mode. So it depends on what average you are talking about. Apparently, it also depends on who is doing the averaging, for example- at my current job, one of the workers has said to others that I "work my balls off", whereas the CEO and her lackey have called me a "drooling" "zoned put" idiot, who "does not do anything". Meh.

In statistics you are correct, but they are used to represent data sets in different ways, eg

If we new the ages of a group of people.

The Mean age is the sum of the ages of each member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
This would be the average age of the group. ( eg ages 5, 8, 16, 21, 21,42, 42) Mean age is 22.14

The Median age of the same group would be the age at the mid point of the group, or the average of the middle two ages, if the group size is of even number.
Then we could say, that at least half the group are above or below this Median age. (eg, ages 5, 8, 16, 21, 21, 42, 42) Median age is 21.

The Mode, is the age that appears most frequently in the group, there can be more than one mode in the group, eg if the age 21 and 42 appeared twice say,
and the rest only once, the modes would be 21 and 42.
Then we could say, the modal frequencies of the group are 21 and 42, these are the ages most common in the group.

What msharmony did when attending school was notice that a lot of students, may be every other one, had blonde hair. This was a quantitative assessment
of a sample of students in her school, of which had a very high proportion of blonde haired students. So she deduced that blonde hair was common in her school
without needing to write down the numbers, which was probably true for her school.However, it would not be true to draw the same conclusion and say that
blonde hair was common in her town, without further investigation. The sample she used in school is OK for school, but the sample required for the town
would need to be a Random sample from the town population, and of a suitable size. Hope all this is of help.

Average: sum of a type of quantity, divided by the count of individual occurrances from each of which the quantity had been taken and summed.

thus:

There is average height of a population (random or other), when you add up the height of everyone, and divide it by the number of those people, whose height has been summed into the total.

Average eye colour or hair colour is not sensical in the math sense, but since we use it profusely (or the kind) in our language, obviously it has taken on the meaning of "average is a specimen taken from such a population in which the specimen represents the majority or else represents the largest minority." Thus, blonde as an average is true in Italian weddings, but only for the females; men at italian weddings tend to be dark haired on the average.

Halfway point between two extremes is not called average, but "median".

Existing pencimen or specimens nearest to the centre between extremes of a truly averagable quantity, or quality which can be quantified, are called "norm".