I'm having more opinions about stats and how they're used to manipulate people than usual right now.

in stats •  7 months ago 

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Any time I see an infographic or whatever that says applies the word "average" to something that isn't a value I am immediately suspicious whoever made it is trying to manipulate me.

Like if I see a chart of "Average Income of households over time", yeah, I understand that's going to be the mean.

Income is a value, we're averaging it, that makes sense.

But if I see a chart of "Income of the Average household over time" we're not taking the average of the income - we're stating the income of the "average household" and that's a very different thing. To me, that says you're probably actually looking at the median household income - if you took an "average household", what would their income be?

But if you're giving the median, you should just say that. And if you're giving the mean income instead, why aren't you putting the word "average" in front of income and not in front of "household"?

Like maybe the answer is "we don't think our audience knows what the median is", but I'm usually more suspicious you're trying to prey upon folks' lack of knowledge about stats to convince them of things that aren't true.

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