Mean absolute deviation

Alright kiddo, let's talk about mean absolute deviation.

Let's say you have a bunch of numbers, like 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. We're trying to figure out how spread out these numbers are from the average, which is the number that's right in the middle.

First, we add up all the numbers:

2 + 4 + 6 + 8 + 10 = 30

Then we divide that total by how many numbers we have:

30 ÷ 5 = 6

So the average of these numbers is 6.

But we want to know how far each number is from the average. To do this, we find the absolute value of the difference between each number and the average. Absolute value just means how far away something is from zero. For example, the absolute value of -3 is 3, because it's 3 away from 0.

Here's what that looks like:

|2 - 6| = 4

|4 - 6| = 2

|6 - 6| = 0

|8 - 6| = 2

|10 - 6| = 4

Now we add up all those absolute differences:

4 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 4 = 12

To get the mean absolute deviation, we divide that total by how many numbers we have:

12 ÷ 5 = 2.4

So the mean absolute deviation of these numbers is 2.4. That means, on average, each number is about 2.4 away from the average.

I hope that helps, kiddo!