4 ms·
Well, Average is indeed a worthless metric, and that's why everyone is using median for these statistics unless they're arguing in bad faith If you do want to
by ffsm8 7mo ago
Well, Average is indeed a worthless metric, and that's why everyone is using median for these statistics unless they're arguing in bad faith
If you do want to use average, you'd at least need to remove 10% both from the top and bottom before calculating it, but it's still gonna be super untrustworthy.
Not sure what to take away from your comment, I'm still unsure what kind of metric you're pitching and why it'd be a valuable thing to track
- tovej 7mo agoI'm not pitching any metric. I'm describing the metric being discussed. The average is certainly not worthless. The average gives the expectation, which is more meaningful than the median, which is just the arbitrary line at the 50th percentile. So if we're trying to find the expected value of how rich someone is, the average income is the answer. And if we want the expected value of how poor someone is, this new metric (average poorness) is the answer. If we want to learn about poverty, obviously the poorness is more important. But of course, you could also calculate the median poorness in this case, but that would actually just be the inverse of the median income, so no new information would be gained.