Yes, but it doesn't change the fact that's what Ian is potentially like, and so it's somewhat silly to describe such man as "average". The player certainly can have Ian act somewhat average -- that is, pick poor options in dialogues, underperform in bed, don't put effort in his book, lazy around and wank for hours. But, surprise, if Ian acts this way then he generally fails to impress girls enough to establish relationships with them, or finds himself dumped.
If by this you mean the game then we have zero idea what Ian was actually like before it. All we know is that his long time friend Allison has been crushing on him, while he formed relationship with Gillian that lasted years, until it eventually broke down.
It's hardly conjecture when normally Ian is capable of regularly satisfying every woman he gets in bed with. That this is up to the player it's meaningless argument -- average guy doesn't have choice of being excellent or poor performer, he will be at best mediocre because he doesn't know any better.
There's only one small problem with reading these stats in such manner. You know who else is "distinctly average" or just tiny bit above average by this metric? These girls:
Now, don't get me wrong, am fine with the idea of Ian being "just as average" as Lena or Cherry. But i suspect these same people who are fast to call Ian average would scoff quite a bit if you told them any of these girls is "just disctinctly average", too.
edit: to put it differently, i think what we have here is the same effect TVTropes lovingly puts as "Hollywood Homely" i.e. the baseline being drawn so high that character which is supposed to be unattractive would in reality turn men heads as she walks by, because she's gorgeous compared to what actual average (nevermind homely) is like. Ian (and Lena and Cherry etc) are "average" in this sense, but their "average" has very little to do with actual human average, which is considerably lower than what these characters demonstrate.
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