Question : What is the difference between Average and Expected value?
I have been going through the definition of expected value on Wikipedia beneath all that jargon it seems that the expected value of a distribution is the average value of the distribution. Did I get it right ?
If yes, then what is the point of introducing a new term ? Why not just stick with the average value of the distribution ?
Best Answer
The concept of expectation value or expected value may be understood from the following example. Let $X$ represent the outcome of a roll of an unbiased six-sided die. The possible values for $X$ are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, each having the probability of occurrence of 1/6. The expectation value (or expected value) of $X$ is then given by
$(X)\text{expected} = 1(1/6)+2\cdot(1/6)+3\cdot(1/6)+4\cdot(1/6)+5\cdot(1/6)+6\cdot(1/6) = 21/6 = 3.5$
Suppose that in a sequence of ten rolls of the die, if the outcomes are 5, 2, 6, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, 6, 1, then the average (arithmetic mean) of the results is given by
$(X)\text{average} = (5+2+6+2+2+1+2+3+6+1)/10 = 3.0$
We say that the average value is 3.0, with the distance of 0.5 from the expectation value of 3.5. If we roll the die $N$ times, where $N$ is very large, then the average will converge to the expected value, i.e.,$(X)\text{average}=(X)\text{expected}$. This is evidently because, when $N$ is very large each possible value of $X$ (i.e. 1 to 6) will occur with equal probability of 1/6, turning the average to the expectation value.