What is the average colour of a traffic light?

How this links to 360 degree feedback will follow!

Let’s assume we have a basic traffic light system.  And we find out that we have the following distribution

• Red 50% of the time
• Amber 10% of the time
• Green 40% of the time

And someone wants to know what colour it is on average.  What to do?

Average requires numbers.

So, let’s give Red the number 1, Amber the number 2, and Green the number 3.  A bit of Maths will find the average now (50% *1) + (10% * 2) + (40% *3) … 1.9 is the answer.

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