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A) Nothing wrong with average half the people are below average This isn't necessarily true. Imagine a system where we could rate developers. There are 4 'A'

by dsp1234 11y ago

A) Nothing wrong with average half the people are below average This isn't necessarily true. Imagine a system where we could rate developers. There are 4 'A' developers (92,95,97,91) and 2 'B' developers (83, 85). Only 1/3 of the developers are 'below average' as compared to below median, and flip those numbers around and 2/3 are below average. This is kind of important when evaluating the type of company culture that you're in. Is it a place where there are a lot of 'top 5%' developers, and a short tail of good, but not great developers. Or is it a place where there are just one or two developers that doing 'A' work, but a long tail of developers doing solid, but not great work. The 'average' could be misleading in these cases.

baldfat 11y ago
Wow I have a Theology/Philosophy degree and I have seen what I can Theology/Philosophy gymnastics to make some wierd basic fact of life into a totally different thing. You might have missed your calling. Average = Average you have 100 developers 49 and below are bellow average :P
- ThatGeoGuy 11y ago
  > Average = Average you have 100 developers 49 and below are bellow average Not exactly. Average is defined as the 50th percentile, which if you have 100 developers, and can (objectively) rank them in order from 1 to 100, then there is a chance that 49 and below are not "average" or "worse than average." Consider a sample distribution where all 100 employees rank exactly the same. Now all 100 are average. Consider a sample distribution that takes on a bi or tri-modal form, where employee groups cluster at certain knowledge or experience levels. Here you might find that "average" is hard to quantify, as it is not well defined when your distribution does not follow "normal" rules.
- ajuc 11y ago
  What is the average of [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 10]? How many entries are below the average?
  - baldfat 11y ago
    No: Dealing with 10,000 People We are talking rank so top person ranked 10,000 and the bottom is 1. 10,000 - 5,000 are Above Average and the 4,999 to 1 are Bellow Average. What you showed was some abstract numbers that have nothing to do with ranking.
    - ajuc 11y ago
      Nobody said we were using ranking. And we shouldn't, because ranking is misleading (it loses information by hiding the size of the gaps). But even assuming it's a ranking - in a ranking there's possibility of equal rankings, right? So, you can have rankings [1, 1, 1, 1, ..., 1, 10000], and the "average=median" assumption is violated again. Most real-world distributions have different average and median values, the "50% is below average" is a common misconception that should be cleared out. For one important example see average salary - huge majority of people in (almost) every country earn less than average salary in that country.
      - baldfat 11y ago
        How is this NOT ranking. You are using the logical fallacy of Reification (the turning of something abstract into a concrete thing or object) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_%28fallacy%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_%28fallacy%29. What real world example at all works with numbers like you are saying "[1, 1, 1, 1, ..., 1, 10000]". When you are talking about specific people with specific skills you can't go abstract. Average when talking a population group in skills is ranking just like in Standardized Testing. Yes half the children in the America are bellow average and the larger the number the more this is true. Likewise the lower the number the less this is true. We are talking tens of thousands of people. EDIT: Oh I think you looking at this like average house hold income with Bill Gates throwing off the average possibly? Well we are talking about only one thing and that is the skills of a programmer compared to the skills fo other programmers. Just the same as the average math skills of children. This is why we have percentiles and my argument still holds on. Skills are not like money where one person has $60,000,000,000 and another has $100.

by dsp1234 11y ago

baldfat 11y ago

Wow I have a Theology/Philosophy degree and I have seen what I can Theology/Philosophy gymnastics to make some wierd basic fact of life into a totally different thing. You might have missed your calling. Average = Average you have 100 developers 49 and below are bellow average :P

ThatGeoGuy 11y ago
> Average = Average you have 100 developers 49 and below are bellow average Not exactly. Average is defined as the 50th percentile, which if you have 100 developers, and can (objectively) rank them in order from 1 to 100, then there is a chance that 49 and below are not "average" or "worse than average." Consider a sample distribution where all 100 employees rank exactly the same. Now all 100 are average. Consider a sample distribution that takes on a bi or tri-modal form, where employee groups cluster at certain knowledge or experience levels. Here you might find that "average" is hard to quantify, as it is not well defined when your distribution does not follow "normal" rules.
ajuc 11y ago
What is the average of [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 10]? How many entries are below the average?
- baldfat 11y ago
  No: Dealing with 10,000 People We are talking rank so top person ranked 10,000 and the bottom is 1. 10,000 - 5,000 are Above Average and the 4,999 to 1 are Bellow Average. What you showed was some abstract numbers that have nothing to do with ranking.
  - ajuc 11y ago
    Nobody said we were using ranking. And we shouldn't, because ranking is misleading (it loses information by hiding the size of the gaps). But even assuming it's a ranking - in a ranking there's possibility of equal rankings, right? So, you can have rankings [1, 1, 1, 1, ..., 1, 10000], and the "average=median" assumption is violated again. Most real-world distributions have different average and median values, the "50% is below average" is a common misconception that should be cleared out. For one important example see average salary - huge majority of people in (almost) every country earn less than average salary in that country.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      How is this NOT ranking. You are using the logical fallacy of Reification (the turning of something abstract into a concrete thing or object) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_%28fallacy%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_%28fallacy%29. What real world example at all works with numbers like you are saying "[1, 1, 1, 1, ..., 1, 10000]". When you are talking about specific people with specific skills you can't go abstract. Average when talking a population group in skills is ranking just like in Standardized Testing. Yes half the children in the America are bellow average and the larger the number the more this is true. Likewise the lower the number the less this is true. We are talking tens of thousands of people. EDIT: Oh I think you looking at this like average house hold income with Bill Gates throwing off the average possibly? Well we are talking about only one thing and that is the skills of a programmer compared to the skills fo other programmers. Just the same as the average math skills of children. This is why we have percentiles and my argument still holds on. Skills are not like money where one person has $60,000,000,000 and another has $100.