What's the average of 5 MPG and 10 MPG?
The math isn't quite obvious to me, but if you go out camping and get 5 MPG on the way to the campground and turn around and get 10 MGP on the way back, your average MPG won't be 7.5 as you would expe...
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My take on this whole thing is there are a lot of people that failed "are you smarter than a 5th grader". Averaging averages is meaningless (mpg by definition is an average of miles traveled for 1 gallon of gas).
You put one gallon of gas in your car and you find it travel 5 miles than runs out of gas. The next day, there's a big wind, you put 1 gal of gas in your car and you find it travels 10 miles before it runs out. Then you truly did get an average of 7.5 miles per 1 gallon of gas (15 miles divided by 2 gallons).
You want to find out what your average mpg is over a range of tanks of gas, you add the total miles traveled and divide by the total amount of gas used. Fifth grade math.
You put one gallon of gas in your car and you find it travel 5 miles than runs out of gas. The next day, there's a big wind, you put 1 gal of gas in your car and you find it travels 10 miles before it runs out. Then you truly did get an average of 7.5 miles per 1 gallon of gas (15 miles divided by 2 gallons).
You want to find out what your average mpg is over a range of tanks of gas, you add the total miles traveled and divide by the total amount of gas used. Fifth grade math.
