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According to CD:

average (v): to reach a particular amount as an average

Here are some examples that I found:

  1. Many doctors average (= work an average of) 70 hours a week.
  2. Trainee accountants average (= earn an average of) £32,000 per year.

It occurs to me that when you use average this way, the reader fills up the sentence himself. It can come in handy in my essay since it helps me save time on brainstorming how to paraphrase a word/phrase because I don't have to. Here's my attempt to apply this word in an essay:

The expenditure for education was highest in India, at 15%, followed by 13% in Thailand. Meanwhile, the remaining countries averaged around 7%.

However, I'm not sure if I'm using it correctly. English isn't usually kind to me when it comes to inventing new ideas. Besides, I feel that I might have to replace "the remaining countries" with "the remaining countries' expenditures". But then I still have to mention "expenditure" again. It's not that bad but not having to use it again is even better.

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    They are fine. Two points: save time brainstorming how to etc. Also, we use attributive nouns here a lot; education expenditure, for example. The expenditure of the remaining countries. No need for the possessive. Let me tell you this: There are a couple of OP's here that fight us every step of the way. The nice thing about you is that you take it in like candy. [You do not need the comma after and before India, the sentence flows fine without it.]. Also rather than meanwhile, use: In contrast. He was in the car listening to music. Meanwhile, I was taking a bath. :)
    – Lambie
    Commented Jun 8 at 16:05
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    I wouldn't include either meanwhile or by/in contrast. I don't have access to the data being summarized (which I suppose is made up anyway; no way does India spend 35% of GDP or tax revenues on education, and I can't think what else that percentage represents). But it's quite possible the 3rd and 4th highest percentages are only slightly lower than the 2nd highest, with the average of all those "remaining countries" being dragged down by exceptionally low values for some countries at the bottom. Which automatically makes the reader suspect he's being misled by "cherry-picking".
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 8 at 16:44
  • ...in such contexts, it's always wise to at least specify the next highest value (3rd, in this case) which contributes to the "remaining average", without necessarily naming that 3rd country. If it's 12% then the average and "cutoff" are meaningful. If the next value is 24%, why wasn't that country also named?
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 8 at 16:49
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    All your sentences are grammatically and semantically fine.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jun 8 at 17:02
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    Another example is "We're averaging 18,000 attendees per event". As others have said, the sentences are just fine, but I agree with FumbleFingers about not including "meanwhile", a semicolon might do in its place.
    – ohshitgorillas
    Commented Jun 8 at 17:17

1 Answer 1

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You are correct that the reader completes some abbreviated sentences themselves, but they only do so from context. For example, I would expect a sentence like "many doctors average 70 hours a week" to be part of a wider conversation about the number of hours worked.

Your statement seems wrong, but not for grammatical reasons. It seems wrong for mathematical and logical reasons:

The expenditure for education was highest in India, at 15%, followed by 13% in Thailand. Meanwhile, the remaining countries averaged around 7%.

The previous percentages were not expressed as averages (unless your wider context has said that they are?) It makes no sense to compare actual percentages for some countries against an average of several others. If you're trying to make the point that 7% for the 'remaining countries' in your data is markedly lower than India's 15% and Thailand's 13% that could be extremely misleading because a country with a very high rate such as 20% and another with 1% could result in a low average if you lumped them together, and any good data analyst would wonder why you are not making a straight comparison.

You clarified in comment that the figures for India and Thailand are actual figures (not 'averages' as such, although no doubt they represent spending in a specific time period such as a financial year) and that you don't want to detail all the other countries' figures. In that case, don't use the word 'average' at all. An average is the ratio of summation of all the data to the number of units present in the list, but as a general rule, you should not average out a set of percentages because the denominators in each are not equal, ie those countries are not of equal size. For example, consider if a set of 100 people where 1 person meets the metric criteria (1%) was added to a set of just 1 person that met the criteria (100%) - the percentages would average at around 50%, yet only 2 persons out 101 met the criteria. That's clearly not what you're doing - you're just trying to say that all the percentages, viewed individually, were around the 7% mark.

You should probably make a broader statement like:

Education expenditure was highest in India, at 15%, followed by 13% in Thailand. The remaining countries had expenditures of around 7%.

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  • I see your point. Let me expand on the context a little bit. India and Thailand's figures were on top, while all of the other countries' were around 6 to 9 percent. I don't have time to talk about all of them, so I feel that giving the average is a way to describe what the whole picture was like. Using "around" is clearly better, but the two sentences I wrote before these two had exactly the same structure. That's why I want to vary it up a little bit.
    – An IELTS Learner
    Commented Jun 9 at 2:25
  • @AnIELTSLearner I've updated my answer for this clarification
    – Astralbee
    Commented Jun 9 at 8:10
  • @AnIELTSLearner And speaking of percentages, I've noticed that you receive a tremendous amount of help on here but you only seem to accept a very small percentage of the answers you get. It is respectful to accept the answer that helps you.
    – Astralbee
    Commented Jun 9 at 8:15
  • You're mistaken about the rate of accepting answers. The OP accepts answers, and upvotes them too regularly. There are far far worst offenders, there is one user who has been on ELL for over 4 years, asks questions every week but has only upvoted five times since they joined!
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jun 9 at 9:16
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    For me personally, I never judge an answer by the fact that it's been accepted or not. I can read the question and answers myself to make my own decision about what's the best answer. I always rely on my own judgement and the number of upvotes.
    – An IELTS Learner
    Commented Jun 9 at 12:33

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