Regardless, if the problem is an input that normally registers the state of a button except for noise for some time as it bounces when it transitions, 48 of those reads, the averaging and the 5ms latency that incurs are unnecessary with respect to the problem.

An averaging filter makes sense if you have a noisy analog input. For a button input that registers whether it is pressed or not except for a known noise around transitions specifically, ignoring the transitions immediately after the first one registered is not only faster (both in terms of latency and CPU cost) but easier to implement. It's also equally practical for switches with long bounce, where the time it would take for an average to favor a transition might be impractically long.