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"The top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their lifetimes than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers." This is an important statemen
by kpwagner 9y ago
"The top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their lifetimes than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers."
This is an important statement. Success in a field is as important as the field itself. Those who lack the IQ or personality for an area of study and subsequent employment will find their life harder than it needs to be. My philosophy: there is value in being in the top ten percent--not that I've always lived by those words.
While the earnings chart is very compelling. I'm a little confused by the labelling. Why are the high and low end of the horizontal bars set to the 10th and 90th percentile? Does this mean the data point used as the high on the chart is the average (or median) of the sample of earners in the 90th percentile?
- kemitche 9y ago90th percentile is probably used so that outliers (Bill Gates) don't overly skew the bar charts. I don't understand your final question though. 90th percentile means that, for the data set, 90 percent earned less and 10 percent earned more. The end of the bar is the 90th percentile mark.
- kpwagner 9y agoAh, okay. That kind of makes sense. If that is true, then the writer's comment about quartiles is wrong--or at least misleading. The outliers thing came to my mind too; it's such a big factor.