Dumb quote of the day

[snousle]

Dumb quote of the day:

It's a sad statistical reality: Half of us are below average.

[bashes head against keyboard]

I guess there is no hope.

[Update: from a comment]

The really sad thing about the "below average" quip is that when it comes to a whole lot of important metrics - like wealth and income - the vast majority of Americans are "below average". Don't know the number but off the top of my head it is probably more than 90%. That number is a direct measure of inequality. It's not like this is some obscure mathematical factoid, it can lead to serious errors in judgment.

Further, more than 99% of Americans are "above average" drivers, since the 1% that kill themselves or others with their cars are SO BAD that any rational valuation of their driving brings the average so low that non-homicidal drivers look excellent in comparison.

Yeah I get all ranty-rant about this sort of thing.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"Below the median" makes it sound like you've been buried underneath a parkway.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

LOL. But then, people who use medians already know what they are.

The really sad thing about the "below average" quip is that when it comes to a whole lot of important metrics - like wealth and income - the vast majority of Americans are "below average". Don't know the number but off the top of my head it is probably more than 90%. And that number is a direct measure of inequality. It's not like this is some obscure mathematical factoid, it can lead to serious errors in judgment.

Besides, more than 99% of Americans are "above average" drivers, since the 1% that kill themselves or others with their cars are SO BAD that any rational valuation of their driving brings the average so low that non-homicidal drivers look excellent in comparison.

Yeah I get all ranty-rant about this sort of thing.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

it's too bad you don't have a vehicle for doing some public education about this sort of thing, cause I'm sure the speaker wasn't stupid, just didn't understand mean/median/mode; reachable but not reached, to use PRspeak.

[jstregyr.livejournal.com]

snousle writes: "when it comes to a whole lot of important metrics - like wealth and income - the vast majority of Americans are "below average"..."

I would dearly like to see a histogram plot of log10(wealth) or log10(income): I suspect these are closer to being a normal curve (i.e., log-normal distribution) than the skewed linear distributions.

[qnetter]

Interestingly, I'm aware of all of these, but was taught in high school that they are all different "averages."

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I often have to look up the definitions too ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average ). What sticks with me though is to always examine which defn of "average" is being used.

[dhpbear.livejournal.com]

I remember a weather man stating years ago:


"The weather this year has been more typical that usual."

WTF?

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Really? I have never seen "average" used to mean "median" except for cases like this.

[broduke2000.livejournal.com]

As John drove down the boulevard, he took note of the elevated average that separated the street car tracks from the roadway.