Average Calculator

What is average calculator?

Statistics start with measures of the center and spread of a set of numbers. The mean is the usual average. The median is the middle value. The mode is the most common value. The range and standard deviation describe how spread out the numbers are.

Teachers use this for grades, shop owners for sales, researchers for survey data, and students for homework. Paste a column from a spreadsheet and the tool does the work.

How to use the average calculator

1. Type or paste your numbers. Commas, spaces and new lines all work.
2. Press Calculate.
3. Read the mean, median, mode, range, sum, count and standard deviation.

How the average calculator works

Mean equals the sum divided by the count. Median is the middle number after sorting, or the mean of the two middle numbers when the count is even. Mode is the most frequent value. Range is the largest minus the smallest. Standard deviation here is the population version.

Worked example

Common uses of the average calculator

• Finding the mean score of a class or a set of survey answers.
• Checking the typical price from a list of quotes.
• Spotting outliers using the range and standard deviation.
• Summarizing monthly sales or expenses.
• Teaching statistics with a hands on example.

Tips and common mistakes

When a few values are very large or very small, the median describes a typical value better than the mean.

This tool uses the population standard deviation. For a small sample from a larger group, the sample version is slightly larger.

Background: what to know before you rely on it

Mean, median and mode are all called averages, but they answer different questions. The mean is sensitive to extreme values. If nine people earn 30,000 and one earns 1,000,000, the mean is skewed upward, while the median stays near 30,000 and describes a typical person better. The mode is the most common value and works for categories as well as numbers. The standard deviation measures how spread out the numbers are. A small standard deviation means values sit close to the mean. Reporting more than one measure gives a fairer picture of any data set.

Private, free and fast

This tool runs entirely in your browser. What you type or choose is not uploaded to a server and is not saved after you close the page, which keeps it fast and private. It is free to use as often as you like. See more in all calculators, or browse the full list of tools.

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Results are for information and education. For legal, financial, medical or security decisions, check with a qualified professional. Financial results are estimates and exclude fees and taxes unless the tool says otherwise.