numpy.mean

http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.mean.html

numpy.mean(a, axis=None, dtype=None, out=None, keepdims=False)[source]

Compute the arithmetic mean along the specified axis.

Returns the average of the array elements. The average is taken over the flattened array by default, otherwise over the specified axis. float64 intermediate and return values are used for integer inputs.

See also

average

Weighted average

std, var, nanmean, nanstd, nanvar

Notes

The arithmetic mean is the sum of the elements along the axis divided by the number of elements.

Note that for floating-point input, the mean is computed using the same precision the input has. Depending on the input data, this can cause the results to be inaccurate, especially for float32 (see example below). Specifying a higher-precision accumulator using the dtype keyword can alleviate this issue.

Examples

>>>

>>> a = np.array([[1, 2], [3, 4]])
>>> np.mean(a)
2.5
>>> np.mean(a, axis=0)
array([ 2.,  3.])
>>> np.mean(a, axis=1)
array([ 1.5,  3.5])

In single precision, mean can be inaccurate:

>>>

>>> a = np.zeros((2, 512*512), dtype=np.float32)
>>> a[0, :] = 1.0
>>> a[1, :] = 0.1
>>> np.mean(a)
0.546875

Computing the mean in float64 is more accurate:

>>>

>>> np.mean(a, dtype=np.float64)
0.55000000074505806