Trigger Warning for people with hair trigger inferiority complexes don't read any further. Say this or some variation of this and watch people freak out. It's very amusing. 50% of children are below average compared to the other 50% of children... The joke is you can say this about any population with a sample size of n >/ 30 50% of penguins are below average compared to the other 50% of penguins. As long as you have a sample size of n >/ 30 the central limit theorem applies and the mean mode and median are the same thing. Therefore, 50% of children are below average compared to the other 50% of children. Say this and watch people freak out. It's very amusing
Lay the Pareto Distribution on them if you want to see some fireworks. In the distribution that Pareto described, 10% will achieve 50% of what is achieved. Ten in a hundred will do half of the work. One hundred in a thousand will have half of the ideas. A thousand in ten thousand will win half of the rewards, and one hundred of them will win of those. 10% of pop stars dominate 50% of the airwaves, but only 10% of their songs ever make it to market. Life is not fair, nor does death give one an advantage.
Well, other people will freak out. Obviously you and I are more rational than the average person. I bet most of them have never even heard of Lake Wobegon.
Of course, one would have to figure out what the heck to measure as well as what the purpose of the exercise might be.
I do not see how anyone of even moderate intellect would be moved by such a clear and simple premise....but it does seem you are easily amused.
People rarely really understand statistics. When I taught a college lab class, I always wanted to ask the students if they wanted me to grade on a curve or not. If they wanted me to grade on a curve, I would have told them, that means that no matter what, 10% of you will fail, only 10% of you will get As. 20% will get Ds. 20% will get Bs. the other 40% will get Cs.
That's only one possible curve shape. I agree that strict grading on a curve is problematic, regardless of the curve shape. But, there can be problems with other methods, too.
I am sorry, but this is nonsense. The median household income in the US was 57K in 2016 while the average income was 79K . More than 50% of US households had income less than the average. It is nonsense to speak of the sample size of a population.
The normal distribution is useful because of the central limit theorem. It states that averages of samples of observations of random variables independently drawn from independent distributions converge in distribution to the normal, that is, they become normally distributed when the number of observations is sufficiently large. The normal distribution f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(x)} μ {\displaystyle \mu } σ > 0 {\displaystyle \sigma >0} has the following properties: · It is symmetric around the point x = μ , {\displaystyle x=\mu ,} which is at the same time the mode, the median and the mean of the distribution
