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Literary notes about average (AI summary)

Writers often use "average" as a flexible tool, seamlessly blending statistical measurement with insights into everyday life and human nature. It marks a baseline of normality—from noting the frequency of mundane, modern observations, as in the case of a Londoner being continuously photographed [1], to critiquing the conventional mindset of professions or social classes [2, 3]. In some works, the term serves to contrast common tendencies with exceptional traits, whether addressing physical measurements like speed and depth [4, 5] or comparing individual attributes against societal standards [6, 7]. This varied use underscores literature’s continuous fascination with the ordinary, inviting readers to reflect on what it means to be average both quantitatively and metaphorically.
  1. The average Londoner is photographed 500 times a day, just walking around the streets.
    — from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
  2. This is the ordinary process of the association of ideas as it spontaneously goes on in average minds.
    — from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James
  3. I believe that the average wife is confined to her home a great deal too much.
    — from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden
  4. Red lights will reduce the average speed considerably.
    — from The Online World by Odd De Presno
  5. Its average depth is 3,000 feet, its average width sixty miles.
    — from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne
  6. He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable.
    — from Howards End by E. M. Forster
  7. He entered Russia with the average American's feeling about the treatment which the government of that people accorded the Jew.
    — from The International Jew : The World's Foremost Problem by Anonymous

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