Microblog Memes

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The state of things (i.imgur.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Below the median

Unless scores follow a standard (or any other symmetric) distribution

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There are different definitions of average and one is median

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and therefore the original comment was wrong and needed to be corrected.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

No, it wasn't wrong because it didn't specify which average was meant. If it was "arithmetic average", it would be wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

It would still be right. The test results are reported on a normalized curve so all measures of central tendency are all equal.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you don't specify then the statement needs to hold for all averages to be correct.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

"I have a ball"
"So you have a red ball?"
"No, it's green"
"If you don't specify then the statement needs to hold for all balls to be correct."

And by the way: for the given plot, it is correct for all averages

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

median is an average

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

It's absolutely not. Median is a value in the middle of a sorted set and average is, well, average. In the set of 1, 7, 10: 7 is median and 6 is average.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

as @force pointed out, 'average' has many meanings (haha). of course a lot of the time, average is used as 'mean'. but...not always!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Idk man looking up a definition for "average" is like

a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.

and

Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode. [from c. 1735]

and

1 a : a single value (such as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values

doesn't look like that dude's using the word "wrong" to me, a lotta people and mathematicians definitely recall using "average" meaning median

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Such irony that this comment gets downvoted on a meme about failing education

Even with a simple, yet very clear example

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

What's ironic here is your comment, lol. "Average" can and is absolutely used to say mean or median or any other average that is representative based on the dataset in question. When you ask a statistician to calculate an average of a dataset they probably won't just go calculate the mean, they'll think about which value is most appropriate in context.