04 | Prof. Amartya Kumar Dutta | Antiquity of the Arithmetic Mean

Ancient India had a strong tradition in computational mathematics and algebra which provided a conducive mathematical environment for the emergence of the statistical arithmetic mean, long before it was formulated in Europe in the 17th century. The conceptualization of the Arithmetic Mean involves the idea of combining several numbers into a single number. Ancient Indian mathematics is replete with various ideas of “combination”.