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I don't see an issue. The headline says average and that normally means mean, not median. It also doesn't say that half of people are excluded from it. People
by benatkin 4y ago
I don't see an issue. The headline says average and that normally means mean, not median. It also doesn't say that half of people are excluded from it.
People reading the article are used to hearing about the average household credit card debt in the USA, and that's also the mean.
Edit: I missed the most men part. Other than that it's fine. That would be like if those credit card debt stories said that "most households have more than $7000 in credit card debt" if the average household credit card debt was found to be $7,486 like it was earlier this year: https://thehill.com/finance/3821799-a-growing-number-of-americans-face-potentially-crippling-credit-card-debt/#:~:text=A%20survey%20by%20NerdWallet%2C%20the,%2410%2C000%20in%20credit%2Dcard%20debt https://thehill.com/finance/3821799-a-growing-number-of-amer.... That would sound wrong to me, and it is.
- Semaphor 4y agoThat’s exactly it. The average gets pulled out of proportion by outliers, so there’s a good chance that far more than 50% of US American man can ride it.
- benatkin 4y agoIt isn't getting skewed, it is simply being different than the median. Very common in statistics.
- Semaphor 4y agoWhat?
- benatkin 4y agoExpecting a gaussian distribution everywhere. For instance in dead pixels in monitors. Say that most have no dead pixels but there are 1000 with one dead pixel. Should there be 1000 with an extra pixel?
- Semaphor 4y agoI don’t understand what you are saying. The article says 50% of men. I said with the average, there is no need for it to be 50%, with the median there would be. I have no idea how what you say is related to that.
- benatkin 4y ago> The average gets pulled out of proportion by outliers This places a value judgment on the mean not being close to the median
- Semaphor 4y agoNo, it simply says there’s a chance. That is what this whole subthread was about, and you argued against it for some inexplicable reason. But now I see you even edited your original comment to say you misunderstood, so I’m thinking you are just arguing for the sake of it.
- russell_h 4y agoThe article says: “According to the CDC, the average American man's waist is 40.5 inches, which means most American men would be excluded from the ride.” If “average” means “mean”, then clearly this reasoning is broken.
- benatkin 4y agoAh, they expanded poorly on it. They also say that again a paragraph above that. Chalk one up for https://norvig.com/reporters-and-parrots.html https://norvig.com/reporters-and-parrots.html Maybe ChatGPT is already capable of replacing human parroting...
- TulliusCicero 4y agoNo, whether average refers to mean or median depends on the context.