61–70 of 116 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't it be: Half of the population is dumber than the median . ??
This is true by default, the other depends on the distribution.
Consider this set of statistics: 90% of elementary school teachers are female [1]. 90% of veterans are male [2]. Unsurprising. But, there are 2 million female veterans in the US, and only 1.7 million female elementary school teachers. That means if you talk to a random American female, it is more likely that she is a veteran than an elementary school teacher. I think a lot of disagreements on Hacker News and elsewher…
That's because you need to know that there are ~20 million veterans and ~1.87 million elementary school teachers, i.e. you need to know the base rate if I'm reversing the calculations properly. Another flaw of averages is apparent when you realize that the average person has less than two eyes.
Consider this set of statistics: 90% of elementary school teachers are female [1]. 90% of veterans are male [2]. Unsurprising. But, there are 2 million female veterans in the US, and only 1.7 million female elementary school teachers. That means if you talk to a random American female, it is more likely that she is a veteran than an elementary school teacher. I think a lot of disagreements on Hacker News and elsewher…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And half of the population is dumber than the average. :-)
Shouldn't it be: Half of the population is dumber than the median . ??
Probably not. Imagine a population of three people. The middle person is not dumber than themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true by default, the other depends on the distribution.
Since intelligence must be a one-sided distribution it's probably right-tailed, which means the mean is higher than the median. So I expect (slightly) more than half of the population to be dumber than average.
There are a lot of people with physical injuries or disabilities that skew things to the left.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn't it be: Half of the population is dumber than the median . ??
>Shouldn't it be: >Half of the population is dumber than the median. >?? Probably not. Imagine a population of three people. The middle person is not dumber than themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because you need to know that there are ~20 million veterans and ~1.87 million elementary school teachers, i.e. you need to know the base rate if I'm reversing the calculations properly. Another flaw of averages is apparent when you realize that the average person has less than two eyes.
That must mean that well over 10% of adult male (from the other statistic that 90% of veterans are male) Americans have served in the military. I never would have thought the number was that high, especially with the military being all volunteer for decades.
Note that this is not some sort of unexpected effect due to humans not behaving mathematically ideally; this is what happens when your intuitions about 1, 2 and 3 dimensions are applied to higher dimensional spaces. Consider the goal of being in the middle 50% of a random value on one dimension; you have a 50% chance. But if you have two dimensions, and you want to be in the middle 50% for both of them, it's a 25% ch…
1 of 10,000 is .01% right?