Editing Average absolute deviation (section)

== Measures of dispersion ==
Several measures of [[statistical dispersion]] are defined in terms of the absolute deviation.
The term "average absolute deviation" does not uniquely identify a measure of [[statistical dispersion]], as there are several measures that can be used to measure absolute deviations, and there are several measures of [[central tendency]] that can be used as well. Thus, to uniquely identify the absolute deviation it is necessary to specify both the measure of deviation and the measure of central tendency. The statistical literature has not yet adopted a standard notation, as both the mean absolute deviation around the mean and the median absolute deviation around the median have been denoted by their initials "MAD" in the literature, which may lead to confusion, since they generally have values considerably different from each other.