3 ms·
One of my pet peeves is when articles such as this use averages exclusively to talk about incomes. Averages are sensitive to outliers, and thus may obscure what
by peatmoss 9y ago
One of my pet peeves is when articles such as this use averages exclusively to talk about incomes. Averages are sensitive to outliers, and thus may obscure what's the typical condition. If you're going to pick one measure to talk about incomes, median may give a better picture of what's typical.
- jackschultz 9y agoThat bothers me on basically every stat on a news article. They just come up with a number and expect people to believe it. But they don't talk about how it was calculated so people can't confirm it themselves, and very often, if multiple "experts" are the ones calculating the stats, they just pick the biggest outlier to strum up more controversy.
- fatjokes 9y agoI think articles like this usually do mention the stats a bit, but usually start out with an extreme story to hook the reader. It's a common storytelling technique and something I see often in journalism and pop-sci books.
- alexbecker 9y agoIt's not just incomes, it seems like news articles almost always use averages no matter how inappropriate they are. I've complained about this at some length: https://alexcbecker.net/blog.html#the-cult-of-averages https://alexcbecker.net/blog.html#the-cult-of-averages