In conclusion, whereas some of the interpretations may be useful to summarize a group of data, it is quite another thing to take a statistic seriously enough as to use it to represent the entire group, as one must do when using averages to compare groups. We claim that viewing an average as a central tendency provides a strong conceptual basis for, among other things, using averages to compare two groups, whereas various other interpretations of average, such as data reducers and typical values, do not.