The funniest thing about this joke is that with just a bit more education, the audience would be able to recognise it isn't true.
Half of all people are dumber than median.
If you've got 7 billion people with equal intelligence and then 1 genius comes along, you've suddenly got 7 billion people who are below average and 1 who's above.
This is why national salaries are listed by the median value and not the average; the 1% drag the average up so it's not useful for comparing anything.
Given that intelligence is typically measured by IQ, it’s literally defined to a normal distribution. Which, yes, means that 50% of the people have an IQ of less than 100 and 100 is the average. If a mega super genius came along (geniuses aren’t that far above the norm, for the record), he’d have an IQ of around 250 or so, even if he had a brain the size of a planet, and 100 would still be the same as before. Because that’s how IQ works.
Colloquia. Also, everyone. "Average" just means "whatever measure of central tendency is most appropriate for this particular situation." You only think it means arithmetic mean because that is the type of average that you are most familiar with seeing.
It has exactly one meaning. "Whichever measure of central tendency is most appropriate in this situation." The "three meanings" you are talking about are median, mode, and mean, the last of which can mean four of more different things.
The median is a type of average. An average is simply a measure of a datset's center. Mean, median, and mode are all valid types of averages. It just most often colloquially refers to the mean, but the other two are valid averages as well.
The funniest thing about this joke is that with just a bit more education, the audience would be able to recognise it isn't true.
No, with more education, it would still be true.
In most population statistics a mean and an average are going to be roughly the same, as most distributions are roughly normal in large enough populations.
This is true for things like intelligence and height.
Your example of why mean and average aren't the same is a fringe case that is used to highlight the difference between the two. In practice though, they'll be functionally the same in a lot of cases.
Sure, but it's a joke about a study. You wouldn't get a study that plays fast and loose with that kind of language.
It's just an opportunity here to go from a lol on Reddit to tacking on a bit of statical literacy that could be helpful for average people tackling popular media headlines.
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u/Huecuva Dec 18 '19
The US military did a study and determined that 1 in every 10 people are too stupid to even be trained to do anything.