What are the different averages?

I spent some time working in a factory that made car parts recently and it is a good example of the different kinds of averages. This factory received about 100 orders a week. We could ship roughly 30 of them in 1 week because we had the parts waiting on the shelf. We shipped about 60 of them in 2 weeks but the last 10 were sometimes very complicated and difficult and took about 12 weeks. If my boss asked me what the average shipping time is what should I say? - The mean is 2.7 weeks (add all times together and divide by the number of orders).  - The mode is 2 weeks (the most common order time). - The median is 2 weeks (the time in which the 50th fastest order was shipped. Each average is useful for different things and none tell us everything so we often need many numbers to describe what is going on.