3 ms·
> No, its because you're not good at math, the problem isn't the pencil. Half the population has to be below the median, after all, [...] This is hilarious, ta
by dozzie 10y ago
> No, its because you're not good at math, the problem isn't the pencil. Half the population has to be below the median, after all, [...]
This is hilarious, talking about hypothetical somebody sucking at math and
using popular incorrect opinion about median in almost the same sentence xD
There is a quite simple distribution with population of just five that has
neither half of the population below the median nor above the median.
- justinhj 10y agoI must be missing something here. Surely the definition of median is that half the population is above, and half below?
- dozzie 10y agoNo. Median is a value of a specimen that at least half of the population is not smaller than it and at least half is not greater than it. In typical cases of large(-ish) populations with a range of values the notion of "precisely half of the population is smaller" is just a mental model good enough to generally understand what the median is about. Now imagine a degenerated case of a population with the same score. Surely there is a median, but surely none of the specimen is smaller than the median. A little less trivial case is a population of five with one value below, one value above, and three values in the middle.
- dozzie 10y ago> Median is a value of a specimen that... Correction: median doesn't have to be a value of a specimen.