The mean gives a center. MAD tells you about spread.
Walk through a small data set and see what average distance really means.
Start with five observations
Consider 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. Their sum is 30. Dividing by five gives a mean of 6. That is the arithmetic center, but it does not yet describe how widely the values are spread out.
Measure each distance from the mean
The absolute distances from 6 are 4, 2, 0, 2, and 4. Their total is 12. Divide by five to get a mean absolute deviation of 2.4. In this data set, an observation is an average distance of 2.4 units from the mean.
Do not confuse two different MADs
The abbreviation MAD can refer to different statistics. This site's tool calculates the mean of absolute deviations about the arithmetic mean. It does not return the median of absolute deviations from the median. These formulations can give different results and should be named explicitly.
Use the same measurement units
If the observations are minutes, both the mean and this mean absolute deviation are in minutes. Comparing MAD across measurements with unrelated units is not meaningful without an appropriate normalization.
Enter the observations in the MAD Calculator to see the complete deviation table. The definition is documented in NIST's average absolute deviation reference.