Is mean and average the same in statistics?

In statistics there are three usual measures of central tendency. Most people are referring to the mean when they use the word average but in statistics one should be a little more precise and use either mean; median or mode. Each of those has it uses and should be used appropriately. For symmetric distributions they are actually equal (or close to it) but for heavily skewed distributions the median may be more appropriate than the mean - or, better yet, compare the two.

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