| Article ID: | iaor20012562 |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Volume: | 97 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page Number: | 337 |
| End Page Number: | 355 |
| Publication Date: | Dec 2000 |
| Journal: | Annals of Operations Research |
| Authors: | Ostasiewicz Stanisawa, Ostasiewicz Walenty |
| Keywords: | measurement |
General considerations about means and expectations are preceded by a short historical overview. The existing approaches to the definition of means are classified into three groups: approximational, functional, and axiomatic. In some particular cases all of them are equivalent. The problem of meaningfulness of means is discussed for ordinal data and for some important cases of metric data. A survey of the main areas of applications: decision theory, group decision, insurance, economical equity and inequality is also provided.