Meanie!

You know, there’s the usual arithmetic mean (pops up nearly everywhere!):

And of course, there’s the geometric mean (appears in the calculation of the end point pH for a titration):


The harmonic mean sometimes pops up in physical solutions (appears in the calculation of reduced mass and average speeds):


And finally, there is the power mean (appears in the calculation of root mean square speed in the kinetic theory of gases):

I'll deal more with these different types of means in later posts, so keep a lookout for them!