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I would like to write an equation to sum the values of each number in a vector divided by the length of the vector. What is the proper way to write this formula?

As an example, consider vector v:

v = [1, 2, 3, 4]  2.5 = 1/4 + 2/4 + 3/4 + 4/4 

Is this the proper way to write this?

$\sum_{i=1}^N \frac{i}{length}$

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    And when you present $V$ as a vector in your context firstly; there won't happen any confusing point for example with numbers,...2012-11-29

3 Answers 3

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You could use $N$, since you are already using it in the summation bound. Another notation to consider depending on the context is $dim(v)$.

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    Yes fbn, you are absolutely correct and I hereby recant my advocacy for considering $dim~v$ as a reasonable notation.2012-11-30
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As noted, this is the arithmetic mean of the elements in $v$. You can indicate this in a number of ways such as:

$\sum_{x\in v} \frac{x}{|v|} = \sum_{i=1}^{|v|} \frac{v_i}{|v|}$

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    Thanks. Yes, I'm aware it's the mean. I choose a simplified example to depict what I am trying to convey. My actual use case is more complex. Thus, I was looking for the clearest way to convey vector length.2012-11-29
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I would be tempted to use the notation $\overline{{\bf v}}$, as is done with the arithmetic mean $\overline{x}.$ If your vector is given by ${\bf v} = (v_1,\ldots,v_n)$ and you are calculating

$\frac{v_1+\cdots+v_n}{n}$

then you are calculating the arithmetic mean of the data set whose datum are the components of the vector. It seems perfectly reasonable to represent data sets by vectors and to write $\overline{{\bf v}}.$