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> There are more people on the right and left side of a bell curve than in the center. That's almost tautology they way you worded it. Statistics has a term to
by SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
> There are more people on the right and left side of a bell curve than in the center.
That's almost tautology they way you worded it. Statistics has a term to describe "left and right", it is called standard deviation, and one standard deviation covers ~70% of the sample population.
What is true is that half of any population is below average by whatever metric you choose to apply. (EDIT: for normal/Gaussian distributions)
- Geminidog 6y ago>What is true is that half of any population is below average by whatever metric you choose to apply. Not exactly, this is sort of true in practice but not true logically. Imagine a population of [1, 100, 100, 100] or a population of [1,1,1,1,999999]. Two examples where the population that is below average exceeds half the population and is below half the population. But this is just semantics. If the population follows a bell curve and at high resolution standard deviations, what you said is generally true.
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y agoYou are correct for non Gaussian distributions. IQ tests appear to be a normal dist. I was not specific enough. That's the old joke, "If Jeff Bezos walks into a dinner party, suddenly everyone is on average a billionaire!" Which used to be "Bill Gates", and before that "Warren Buffet". I wonder who will be the next person to fill in this joke. :)