What you’ll learn to do: Find the average and basic probabilities from a set of numbers

How can you calculate a baseball player’s batting average?

One application of decimals that arises often is finding the average of a set of numbers. What do you think of when you hear the word average? Is it your grade point average, the average rent for an apartment in your city, the batting average of a player on your favorite baseball team? The average is a typical value in a set of numerical data. Calculating an average sometimes involves working with decimal numbers. In this section, we’ll look at three different ways to calculate an average.

Before you get started, take this readiness quiz.