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For the Boston-Cambridge-Newton area they have this: Top 5% More than $374,000 So 1 in 20 people in this area bring in more than 374K a year? That is sort of

• deleted 7y ago
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• percentiles 7y ago
  that's not how percentiles work. also, you'd need to know whether that value they use is the lower bound on the top 5% and how that compares to the top 5% for the general population
  • anpama 7y ago
    That's exactly how they work...? And it's stated explicitly that it's a lower bound ("More than").
    • percentiles 7y ago
      no it is not. in any case it's referring to household incomes and only between people who are 35 to 64. so again, no, 1/20 people are not making that much. again, percentiles do not work in a fashion where you can take one group (35 to 64) and apply it to the entire population. i repeat, that's not how percentiles work.
      • anpama 7y ago
        That's exactly how they work: if the top 5% of people in some cohort earn $X or more, then that means 1 in 20 people in that cohort earn $X or more. OP may have confused one cohort (households) for another (individuals), but that's irrelevant to how percentiles work.
        • percentiles 7y ago
          What you're saying is true but is irrelevant to my point. With the original post the claim was that 1/20 in Boston make more than 374k because the top 5% of people between 35 and 64 make more than 374k. Again this is not true and is not how percentiles work. What's so difficult to understand? If you have 98 people in Boston who are 18 who make $1 and 1 who is 40 who makes $374K and another who is 36 who makes $10K what does this mean? It means 50% of people in Boston between 35 and 64 make more than 10K, but not that half of the people in Boston in general make that much, as the original post suggested. The original poster was claiming he or she was not doing well because of the data NYT presented, but percentiles cannot be extrapolated from one group to another. As you've said it's only useful for a specific cohort in which it's measured. In my hypothetical example the person making 10k would be in the top 2% despite being in the lower 50% for income in their cohort.
          • sokoloff 7y ago
            Your reading of the original comment gives zero charity to their comment. While they did not specify for that cohort, I think even a plain reading would intuit that's what they had in mind. You're technically right.
      • DangitBobby 7y ago
        Clearly the misconception isn't "that's not how percentiles work" it's "that's a percentile of only a subset of the population". I don't know why you keep repeating yourself. It is exactly how percentiles work in that subset.
• anpama 7y ago
  And that's higher than the Bay Area's 5%. I think the difference is that Boston has a lot of highly paid professionals (doctors, white-shoe lawyers, consultants, finance) who can earn much more than most people do in tech and other professions.
• sokoloff 7y ago
  $374K/yr is the household income 95th percentile aged 35-64 figure for Boston-Cambridge-Newton. $239K/yr is the individual income 95th percentile aged 35-64 figure for that area.
• deleted 7y ago
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