It would seem that sums and means are trivially related; the mean is just the sum divided by the number of items.
But when you generalize things a bit, means and sums act differently.
Let x be a list of n non-negative numbers, and let r > 0 [*].
Then the r-mean is defined to be and the r-sum is define to be These definitions come from the classic book Inequalities by Hardy, Littlewood, and Pólya, except the authors use the Fraktur forms of M and S.
If r = 1 we have the elementary mean and sum.
Here’s the theorem alluded to in the title of this post: As r increases, Mr(x) increases and Sr(x) decreases.
If x has at least two non-zero components then Mr(x) is a strictly increasing function of r and Sr(x) is a strictly decreasing function of r.
Otherwise Mr(x) and Sr(x) are constant.
The theorem holds under more general definitions of M and S, such letting the sums be infinite and inserting weights.
And indeed much of Hardy, Littlewood, and Pólya is devoted to studying variations on M and S in fine detail.
Here are log-log plots of Mr(x) and Sr(x) for x = (1, 2).
Note that both curves asymptotically approach max(x), M from below and S from above.
Related posts Volume of Lp norm balls Swedish superellipse Squircles [*] Note that r is only required to be greater than 0; analysis books typically focus on r ≥ 1.
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