There is something I’m really having a hard time wrapping my head around and that is the term “average speed”. I think it’s an absolute misnomer.
So, I use the following example. It took me fifty (50) minutes to drive 25 miles. I did the math, and that works out to 30 miles per hour. Is the 30-miles-per-hour figure an average speed? No, it’s more like the sustained-speed equivalent over the 25-mile distance.
Okay, so say I have ten boxes filled with different items. The weight of each box varies. I weigh each individual box and here are the individual weights:
30 pounds
45 pounds
25 pounds
10 pounds
17 pounds
13 pounds
15 pounds
22 pounds
19 pounds
34 pounds
Total weight = 230 pounds
Average weight of each box = 23 pounds.
Ten boxes whose combined contents weigh 230 pounds and whose average weight per box is 23 pounds. It’s a very straightforward process.
So, my next example involves a train traveling at varying speeds from origin to destination which, to make things simpler, is 100 miles.
The train covers the distance in an hour. It would be tempting to say that the train’s average speed is 100 miles per hour. But, I just don’t see how that can be representative. As far as I’m concerned, the term average speed, if applied here would be a misrepresentation.
I think the better applied term in this instance is sustained-speed equivalent or SSE.
It’s kind of like in the game of baseball with the term batting average which really isn’t an average at all. In reality each batter starts each season off with an, ahem, “average” of 1.000, this also being described as batting a thousand. I don’t know what the correct phraseology for this is, but I know what it ain’t. And, that’s average.