Elementary Statistics (1+1)

6.5.4 Merits and Demerits of Harmonic Mean

Merits

Harmonic mean is rigidly defined, based upon all the observations and is suitable for further mathematical treatment. Like geometric mean it is not affected much by fluctuations of sampling. It gives greater importance to small items and is useful only when small items have to be given a very high weightage.

Demerits: Harmonic mean is not easily understood and is difficult to compute.