> This is why I stressed considering what is marginalized out. I'll use an extreme example. Let A = [1,1,1,1,50000] and B = [100,100,100,100,100]. Is A > B? Mea

> This is why I stressed considering what is marginalized out. I'll use an extreme example. Let A = [1,1,1,1,50000] and B = [100,100,100,100,100]. Is A > B? Mean(A) = 10k, Mean(B) = 100. Median(A) = 1, Median(B) = 100. Similarly Congress can, on average, beat the market while 2/3rds of them do not. I hope we see that the math even allows for us to approach 0% of members beating the market while an average value can. That’s a wildly different claim though. If you’re saying one person beat the market by a suspicious amount, you should say that. You should not say that a large group of people beat the market. The large group of people on average did not. Using the mean to describe a group dynamic when your mean is dominated by a single outlier is lying with statistics. I am a data scientist fwiw. > I am certain you know that "difficulty" is about intentional skill and not a reference to an act of god. You have removed any doubt that a conversation can happen in good faith. I don’t care about your semantic argument. It is very easy to beat the sp500 on a given year by random chance. I have done it for the last six years by a negligible amount. Do I have any particular insight? No. I’m 95% dumped in SPY and my 5% did a bit better. It is only beating it repeatedly and by a meaningful amount and net of any fees related to funds or investment managers that are hard. SPY is not a magic, difficult to beat goal. It’s simply a solid, average performing strat that takes zero effort. The reason most funds underperform it is because they do zany high risk stuff. If your portfolio is comprised of largely normal investments in common companies you’ll on average match the SPY with about half of your years beating it. > Clearly you do. But I actually don't. I don't wrestle with pigs. I really don’t. I don’t actually think politicians should be allowed to trade stocks at all for appearances alone. I just don’t like bad stats.