I agree that “the average” means the arithmetic mean much more often than it means any other specific measure of central tendency.
Do you, or are you just being agreeable?
I think the majority of usage is a vague confusion between median and mode. Maybe it means mean more than any other precise meaning, but most of the time it definitely doesn’t mean mean.
Yes, I really do think that, but I think you may have misunderstood what that is :-).
I agree (with you) that most of the time the word “average” doesn’t denote any specific kind of, er, average. And I agree that, in so far as people using it that way have any specific idea in mind, that idea probably has more of “median” and “mode” in it than of “arithmetic mean”. But I think when it does denote something specific it’s much more often the arithmetic mean than anything else. And that’s what I was saying.
“Specific” isn’t very specific. If you use it so narrowly as to only include examples where people have actually done a calculation, it means mean more than it means anything else, but not “much more often.” But I think that there are a lot of broader meanings of “specific” under which mean loses.
Do you, or are you just being agreeable?
I think the majority of usage is a vague confusion between median and mode. Maybe it means mean more than any other precise meaning, but most of the time it definitely doesn’t mean mean.
Yes, I really do think that, but I think you may have misunderstood what that is :-).
I agree (with you) that most of the time the word “average” doesn’t denote any specific kind of, er, average. And I agree that, in so far as people using it that way have any specific idea in mind, that idea probably has more of “median” and “mode” in it than of “arithmetic mean”. But I think when it does denote something specific it’s much more often the arithmetic mean than anything else. And that’s what I was saying.
“Specific” isn’t very specific. If you use it so narrowly as to only include examples where people have actually done a calculation, it means mean more than it means anything else, but not “much more often.” But I think that there are a lot of broader meanings of “specific” under which mean loses.
Maybe, but they happen not to be the meaning of “specific” I was using when I wrote the words in question.
(Of course you needn’t care about that. The author is dead, etc.)