Harmonic Mean

Pronunciation: /hɑrˈmɒn.ɪk min/ Explain

A harmonic mean is a type of average. It is especially useful for rates and ratios. A rate is a value in one dimension divided by a value in another dimension such as kilometers per hour. The formula for the harmonic mean is:

where x_i is the i^th value in the dataset and n is the number of values in the dataset.

References

1. McAdams, David E.. All Math Words Dictionary, harmonic mean. 2nd Classroom edition 20150108-4799968. pg 89. Life is a Story Problem LLC. January 8, 2015. Buy the book

Cite this article as:

McAdams, David E. Harmonic Mean. 12/21/2018. All Math Words Encyclopedia. Life is a Story Problem LLC. https://www.allmathwords.org/en/h/harmonicmean.html.

Image Credits

• All images and manipulatives are by David McAdams unless otherwise stated. All images by David McAdams are Copyright © Life is a Story Problem LLC and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Revision History

12/21/2018: Reviewed and corrected IPA pronunication. (McAdams, David E.)
7/16/2018: Removed broken links, updated license, implemented new markup, implemented new Geogebra protocol. (McAdams, David E.)
10/25/2010: Initial version. (McAdams, David E.)