What statistical measure indicates the average of a set of values?

The mean is the statistical measure that represents the average of a set of values. It is calculated by summing all the values in a dataset and then dividing that sum by the total number of values. This provides a central tendency that is useful for understanding the overall distribution of the data. The mean is particularly valuable because it takes into account every value in the dataset, thus providing a comprehensive measure of its average.

When looking at the other choices: the mode is the value that appears most frequently in the dataset, and it does not consider the overall distribution. Variance measures how spread out the values are from the mean, focusing instead on the dispersion rather than the average itself. Standard deviation, while also related to variance, quantifies the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values in relation to the mean, but like variance, it does not indicate the average value. Thus, the best measure to indicate the average is unequivocally the mean.