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To answer the author's postscript: "why did nobody tell me this?" Because you didn't pay attention at school? Means, medians, modes and percentiles were standa
by em500 10y ago
To answer the author's postscript: "why did nobody tell me this?"
Because you didn't pay attention at school? Means, medians, modes and percentiles were standard fare in my high school, and again in freshman university courses. And I didn't go to particularly expensive schools or elite universities. Then again, I also taught intro stat courses to BA students for a few years, and it was easy to tell that the vast majority of them cared very little, since understanding their uses wasn't exam material.
- rankam 10y agoI think the author is trying to point out that mean, median, and mode are things that people think they understand because they know how to calculate them - any one of them is trivial for the majority of the high school educated population (14-18 years old). However, just because you can calculate something doesn't mean you know how to properly apply it. When you taught your intro stats class, did you try to give the students guidance (and convey understanding) as to when and why they should apply one of the statistics? If so, good on you, but from my, obviously anecdotal experience, that has not been the case.