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Google says avg American makes ~$60k/yr and spends ~$600/yr on drinking. 2% of 60k is 1200. So they'd need to be spending as much on weed/cigs/hard drugs as the
by SeanAnderson 3y ago
Google says avg American makes ~$60k/yr and spends ~$600/yr on drinking. 2% of 60k is 1200. So they'd need to be spending as much on weed/cigs/hard drugs as they do on alcohol.
I think it's close, but unlikely?
- Georgelemental 3y agoMedian vs. mean likely makes a very large difference here.
- SeanAnderson 3y agoI don't disagree, but my response was directed to someone who was commenting on the average American. Didn't seem reasonable to interpret them differently just to build a more convincing answer.
- playingalong 3y ago"The average American" could easily be interpreted as the median.
- SeanAnderson 3y agofair enough
- pseudalopex 3y agoAverage person means median usually. Average expense could be either. HN guidelines say respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bidandanswer 3y agoThe average is a really misleading statistic here, because alcohol and drug use seem to follow a power law distribution. The top X% of drinkers drink orders of magnitude more than the average. They skew the average much, much higher than what people think of as how much the "average person" drinks. According to this news article [1], the "average person" drinks (73.85 + 15.28 + 6.25 + 2.17 + 0.63 + 0.14 + 0.02) / 10 = 9.834 drinks per week! But the fifth decile (the middle of the distribution) drinks only 0.14 drinks per week --- less than one per month! I appreciate your analysis but I think the average is too lossy of a statistic to make a good argument here. 1. 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...