r/talesfromtechsupport • u/[deleted] • Dec 18 '19

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u/nosoupforyou Dec 18 '19

George Carlin did a study and found that half of all people are dumber than average.

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u/Glaselar Dec 19 '19 edited Dec 19 '19

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.

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u/[deleted] Dec 19 '19

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u/Glaselar Dec 19 '19

...by whom?

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u/ThirdFloorGreg Dec 19 '19

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.

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u/Glaselar Dec 19 '19

Hmm... Colloquia are probably the least likely places where people would use loosely defined words, no?

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u/ThirdFloorGreg Dec 19 '19

Average is not loosely defined.

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u/Glaselar Dec 19 '19

It's got 3 different meanings. You're unlikely to have someone use it in the general sense at a colloquium - academics are trained out of that.

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u/ThirdFloorGreg Dec 19 '19

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.

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u/Glaselar Dec 19 '19

We're making the same point about what average means.

You wouldn't get the word average used at colloquia. It's colloquial, but those two similar words mean quite opposite situations.

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u/ThirdFloorGreg Dec 19 '19

Dude, it was a joke.

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u/Glaselar Dec 19 '19

Oh. I guess you could say it was a pretty below-median effort.

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