Mean is a fundamental statistical measure of central tendency, commonly referred to as the average, which is calculated by summing all the individual values or cases in a dataset and then dividing that total by the number of individual cases or values. The mean provides a single number that represents the typical or central value of a set of data and is widely used in various fields, including sociology, to summarise and analyse quantitative information. For example, one might calculate the mean income of a population by adding up the incomes of all individuals and dividing by the total number of individuals. While the mean is a useful measure, it can be influenced by extreme values (outliers) in the data, which may not accurately represent the central tendency in some cases. In such situations, other measures of central tendency, such as the median or the mode, might be more appropriate.