The spiky shape of the n-cube can be used as an illustration of the “myth of averages”, i.e. the observation that basically no person can be considered “average

The spiky shape of the n-cube can be used as an illustration of the “myth of averages”, i.e. the observation that basically no person can be considered “average” or “typical” as soon as you consider a number of dimensions (famously observed by the US Air Force when trying to adjust fighter jet cockpits to the average dimensions of pilots [1]). If you consider n variables along which people and their experience can vary, the space that is “reasonably close” to the average (e.g. an n-ball or even an n-cube with side length 1−ε) becomes vanishingly small compared to the full space. I find this is an important concept to keep in mind when designing systems and products. When you reach a certain complexity, most cases are edge cases and designing only for the “typical” case serves almost nobody. [1]: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/