4 ms·
Does median represent the normal anymore?
by sethjgore 4mo ago
Does median represent the normal anymore?
- JohnFen 4mo agoWhen it comes to income and wealth, I don't think so. There aren't enough people in the middle ground between rich and poor for that to be a meaningful stat for most things.
- bigfishrunning 4mo agoIf there are very few people in the middle ground, and more people are poor, then wouldn't the median be a poor person and therefore somewhat representative? I'm not sure I'm following your logic here...
- ajmurmann 4mo agoIf you look at income distribution over time you'll see that the middle indeed shrunk. However, they moved to high income.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- xedrac 4mo agoThe median alone doesn't paint the whole picture. We need to compare the spread as well. The median doesn't care if you make just under the median, or $1 a month.
- bigfishrunning 4mo agoCertainly better then the mean....
- lbriner 4mo agoIt depends on the distribution. The reason it is often used is when there are extremes in the distribution like a handful of people paying $1B per year on a property pulls the mean upwards. Also depends whether you can about the middle more than the 10-20% of the people most struggling who can earn much less than the mean or median