Averages hide what's really happening in your business. A 3.5% sales increase might mean some stores doubled while others tanked. Look at outliers and trends instead of settling for the middle number.
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Averages are for losers. Imagine if a company said to you, "Across our 100 locations, average sales in the last month increased by 3.5%." But when you looked at the numbers more closely, you actually saw that 10 stores saw sales double, most of the others broke even, and the rest actually lost sales. Numbers don't sound so good now, do they? Averages almost always hide insights instead of exposing them. If the problem is interesting enough to talk about, it's interesting enough to show the difference the average is hiding. What's more interesting is discussing: what are the outliers? What do they have in common? Are there any explainable trends? That sort of stuff, right? The hard part about telling the truth with numbers isn't about finding the truth. It's about having the guts to share the truth.