Average

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

When people talk about policy the effects are usually expressed in a loaded way using averages.

Say this is a distribution of income.

2 1 2 1 8 2 1 2 1 10

Ten numbers totaling 30. The mean average is 3.

But only 20% of the ten people ever see 3. 80% of the people have probably never seen 3 in their lives.

On the other hand, if we say, "The typical person makes 1 or 2" we would be right, but the psychologically implied total in phrasing it that way would be a lot less than 30.

The median is 2. 50% of people make 2 or more. 50% of people make 2 or less. In this case the median is more representative of the situation, but in another example it could be a highly misleading statistic.

2 1 2 1 8 2 1 2 1 1000

Creating one super-rich person doesn't change the median at all. It is still 2.

In this case the mean average is over 100... despite the fact that only one guy can even imagine making 100.

And so on.

Political types tend to use whichever sort of average suits their argument. (We do it too, but not nearly as egregiously as the pugs.)