Nope. A median is no kind of average or mean. An average in common parlance is a mean, the two are synonyms.
Argument by Encyclopedia Brittanica almost always fails. The entr actually describes what I said: that mean is simply a synonym for average, while median is something else. This despite the sentence you’re highlighting.
Nice try. You realize I read the article, right?
This is what is most often meant by an average.
Which is exactly what I said. And which also means that it is not the only meaning.
So does repeating unsupported claims.
Don’t be a couple of meanies now.
What I’m objecting to is this:
“You are referring to the mean.
The median and mean are both types of average”
The post you were responding to was properly using ‘median’, and median is not an average, despite the bad prose that can be found in the EB.
JoshL suggested that “The average American is a Woman” is “not how averages work”. But it can be, if you are using the median.
Happy to settle this definition battle:
We have our own resident math professor, Mr @Dave_Perkins , who I’m sure would love to define all kinds of terms related to averages both common and obscure!
A median is not an average. I think you probably know that a median is not an average, but just don’t want to say that. So I’m done.
LOL, yes you have looked into my heart and discerned that I secretly stand with you in your lonely crusade against dictionaries that defile your unique version of English. Bravo!
Actually, I’m laughing at your original objection to the comment, and your stubborn insistence that it was remotely meaningful. Maybe you should try to explain it again. I’ll wait.
Actually, there is a reason why income is usually talked about using the Median average isn’t of the Mean average, because super high wages skew the numbers a lot, so Median is thought to be a better average than Mean.
In any case, because it’s because it’s nominal data, neither Median or Mean would work, only Mode can work.
That’s not the average either Timex. It might be the mode for participating in the linguistics though ;)
(FWIW Scott is right, and the common misuse of average in casual conversation does annoy me somewhat)
By “laughing” do you mean “crying”?
Or are you finally using the same version of English as everyone else?
I mean laughing. And waiting.
Seriously, I don’t know why you are having this discussion? Do you have secrect insight about statistics that I should know about? I would like to know, because one of my goals is to get a position as a statistician for the Census Bureau this year, and if there is something I am missing, I would dearly like to know before I waste my time putting together my Government Resume.
Well both are useful. Mean and median certainly say different things, and comparing the two can be quite enlightening. The mean is somewhere in the 55k range, I believe, while the median is nearer to 32k. That gap can help explain a lot about economics, and income concentration, in the country.
But people rarely have that level of nuance, and just throw around ‘the average American has X’, which can either be useless, or actively misleading, in a public with poor understanding.