In the old ndarray API, we support mx.nd.mean(x, axis=1, exclude=True), in which the meaning is to sum up the axes except axis=1. We do not have the exclude option in mx.np.mean() so it will be good to have.

See the following code snippet for an example:

https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/blob/74430a92f5232808a169c9e238a419789a5c2fda/python/mxnet/gluon/loss.py#L149-L152

Another option is to directly switch to use DeferedCompute so there is no need to add this option.