Averages became a distinctive form of information in early modern European culture, first in commercial arithmetic, then in natural philosophy, demography, political economy, and eventually in eclectic social analysis. Averaging, in the modern sense of calculating an arithmetic mean by adding up the individual values of cases in a set and then dividing that total by the number of cases, provided an empirical and heuristic resource for understanding planetary orbits, fertility and mortality rates, experimental results in natural philosophy, fiscal resources, the return on stock market investments, the relative profitability of crops, incomes and the cost of living, and even the trivia of daily life. Averaging created a new class of fact—precisely typifying information that varied. By the Enlightenment, averages had become a respectable, readily deployed, form of fact, giving unity to the variety of experience and knowledge. Averages became a metaphor of credibility and normality.

中文翻译：

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平均值如何变得正常

平均值成为早期现代欧洲文化中一种独特的信息形式，首先是在商业算术中，然后在自然哲学、人口学、政治经济学中，最后在折衷的社会分析中。平均，在现代意义上，通过将一组案例中的各个值相加，然后将总数除以案例数量来计算算术平均值，为理解行星轨道、生育率和死亡率、实验性数据提供了经验和启发式资源。结果是自然哲学、财政资源、股市投资回报、农作物的相对盈利能力、收入和生活成本，甚至是日常生活的琐事。平均创造了一种新的事实——精确地代表变化的信息。到了启蒙运动时期，平均数已经成为一种受人尊敬的、事实上，易于部署，将各种经验和知识统一起来。平均值成为可信度和正常性的隐喻。