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Glite Dictionary
geometric mean

geometric mean

1 7.4
An average of positive numbers found by multiplying them and taking the root for the number of items
  • noun
  • /dʒiˈɑːmɛtrɪk miːn/
  • Specialized
translation icon : media geométrica
  • To find the average growth rate over the years, we calculated the geometric mean of the yearly percentage increases.
  • geometric mean concentrations
  • geometric mean titers
  • geometric mean titres

Examples

  • The overall measure in each suite is the geometric mean for the benchmarks within the suite.

    Academic text (1994)

  • The geometric mean of the ACGIH target flow for hoods rated as clean was 82 percent.

    Academic text (2004)

  • This geometric mean makes sense only when all the XS are non negative.

  • The aggregate response for each possible item was calculated using the geometric mean.

    Academic text (2001)

  • This time is based on the geometric mean of the disk thickness and its average radius.

  • This is the geometric mean of the proviral load in the gut of the control versus the treated animals.

  • We report the arithmetic and/or geometric mean, and we include SD, median, and range where provided.

    Academic text (2012)

  • For hoods rated dirty, the geometric mean of the ACGIH target was 84.2 percent.

    Academic text (2004)

  • We calculated the geometric mean value of a metabolite across all samples collected from each participant, resulting in 23 participant mean values.

    Academic text (2014)

  • All statistical calculations involving the geometric mean titers (GMTs) of antibodies were performed with log-transformed titers.

    Academic text (2014)

Surface Forms

geometric mean singular
geometric means plural

Morphology

geometric + mean

The constituent 'mean' clearly signals that this is a type of average, so a learner will grasp it is an averaging measure. However 'geometric' carries a technical mathematical sense (multiplicative / n-th root of the product) that does not follow from the everyday sense of 'geometry', so the specific computation is not predictable to a B1 learner without math background. The term is similar across many languages but the procedural detail requires subject knowledge, making it only partially transparent.

Etymology

Geometric mean comes from a picture in geometry: if you make a rectangle with sides equal to two numbers, the side of a square with the same area is the geometric mean, found by multiplying the numbers and then 'taking a root'. That's why the geometric mean is useful for 'average growth rates' and for numbers that multiply over time.