4 ms·
No, 50% of them will be (at or) below median. The word "average" has multiple meanings, but it's most commonly used to mean "mean", i.e. "arithmetic average". I
by tomp 11y ago
No, 50% of them will be (at or) below median. The word "average" has multiple meanings, but it's most commonly used to mean "mean", i.e. "arithmetic average". It's perfectly possible for most people to be below the mean (e.g. in a room full of schoolkids and Bill Gates, only one person is above-average wealthy).
- Sharlin 11y agoBut this is not a room of schoolkids with one billionaire. It's a large sample of the general population, with the variable being measured known to be roughly normally distributed.
- tunap 11y agoNormally distributed with extreme outliers and a significant standard deviation. Most people are not billionaires, AFAIK.
- jdmichal 11y agoIncome is a great example of something that is not normally distributed. First, the normal distribution is over the entire real interval (-∞, ∞), while income is over a partially-bounded interval [0, ∞). Secondly, there's a very long tail on the upper end, but a hard-stop (at zero) at the low end. I would expect it to look more like a Pareto distribution [0], with a bit of a hump at the low-end. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
- Sharlin 11y agoI was probably too terse. My point was that the GP was talking about talent, not income, and however you define talent, it's probably roughly normally distributed like IQ.
- nightski 11y agoIf wealth was normally distributed that would be incredible!
- paulsutter 11y agopjc50 said "at least 50%", and it's clear he was being very informal about using the term "average".
- taneq 11y agoI hate seeing an accurate post downvoted. I mean sure, you're being a tad pedantic, but if you can't be pedantic here then where can you be? :/ Measures of central tendency all have strengths and weaknesses but the fact that outliers strongly skew the mean is one of its textbook weaknesses.
- slavik81 11y agoI find it obnoxious when someone interprets a post uncharitably just to say it's wrong. It erodes the quality of discourse by forcing writers to expend time and words preempting pointless gotchas.
- tomp 11y agoI, on the other hand, find it obnoxious when people are saying things that are obviously wrong. Claim: "The majority of drivers are better than average." Stupid person: "That impossible, 50% are worse than average." Me: "You obviously can't math."
- slavik81 11y agoTo be fair, I think my initial reading of the post in question might have been too charitable. A few bits don't make sense with any interpretation I can think of.