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Averages aren't really good metrics for statistics that don't fall on a bell curve, like with a lot of consumables. Take alchohol [0] consumption, if you look a
by qppo 6y ago
Averages aren't really good metrics for statistics that don't fall on a bell curve, like with a lot of consumables. Take alchohol [0] consumption, if you look at raw numbers the "average" American drinks quite a lot per day, but it turns out the average American probably doesn't drink much at all.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
- singron 6y agoIt's like they say: the average American is half male, half female, and has 1.9 children.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoIt actually varies by year and region with a slightly higher than half percentage being male https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio
- Simon_says 6y agoNo, not in the US. Most Americans are women. China and India skew the global percentages.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI think my parent comment's point, that the premise "marketers convinced America to eat fish sticks" hasn't actually been shown, stands. Sure, the average doesn't tell us much, but it does tell us that consumption is really, really low. The more you push consumption levels up to realistic amounts for some people, the more other people you have to admit will never touch a fish stick in their lives.
- newen 6y agoThe modal American is the more correct term I guess. Mode is a type of average, so it works out.
- samatman 6y agoI think what we're getting from this is that the modal American doesn't eat fish sticks in a typical year, since the mean American eats half a serving. It's likely that modal group is so large that the median American doesn't eat any in a typical year, either. For the record: I have eaten 0 fish sticks in 2020, so far, and expect that the record will stand.
- mark-r 6y agoI think the average American doesn't understand averages.