College Math CLEP Prep Practice Exam

To find the mean of a set of numbers, you need to take the sum of all the values and divide it by the number of values in the set. This is because the mean is the average of all the values in the set and dividing by the number of values gives you the average. Multiplying the smallest and largest numbers together (choice B) or finding the product of all the numbers (choice D) will not give you the mean as they are methods for finding the range and product respectively. Similarly, subtracting the smallest number from the largest number (choice C) will give you the difference between the two numbers, not the mean. Therefore, the correct method is to add all the numbers together and divide by the number of values, as stated in choice A.