Law of Averages
A recent study has determined that you are wrong about everything. Just kidding...
Law of averages
An associate of mine once said to me, as we discussed averages and what it meant to be average, “If a man is standing with one foot in a bucket of ice, and the other foot in a fire, on average, he’s comfortable!”
There’s essential truth there, not as absurd as you might think, statistically speaking. It’s easy to draw incorrect conclusions from the data. I took statistics as part of graduate studies for a master’s in educational administration. We of course studied averages, medians, and statistical error. One thought that I had, concerning my classrooms full of students, was that I could design a test in which no one received the average grade. If the average grade was 80, that in no way meant that anybody had in fact received an 80. That’s what medians are for. That is the grade in the middle. So, if there are 31 students, and you list their grades on the test from highest to lowest, then grade number 15 is the median. To learn as much from the data as possible, a statistician considers the average, the median, and a number of other things.
But never presume that statistics will tell you all that you need to know. They can be interpreted carefully and professionally, and they can be interpreted rashly and amateurishly. As has been said, “There’s lies, there’s damned lies, and then there’s statistics.” One of my favorite “lying statistics” that used to go around: “90% of high school students either smoke pot, or know someone who does.” Boy! That’s a lot of students smoking pot! Oh, but wait. It could be that only 3% smoke pot, and 87% know that they do. So, how many students actually smoke pot? A lot or a little? There’s no way to know, based only on the information given. But people see that statistic and presume that a lot of kids are smoking pot. Lies presented as statistics.
As part of my studies in the statistics class that I took, I needed to make a report that concerned the IQs of my students. As a teacher, I had access to that information. There was surprising variability between student’s IQs and their academic success, but the overall trend was about as one would suspect. Except for one student. He failed everything. He made no effort in any class, and had been a complete washout for his entire seven years of school. And he had the highest, and I mean the HIGHEST, IQ of any other student. Statistical analysis will never tell us why. Was he so smart that he was bored silly with class? Perhaps he had a special aptitude for taking IQ test but not for academic learning? Or was he just REALLY lucky in randomly picking answers in the multiple choice IQ test? That last one is a statistical possibility, however unlikely. The point here, statistics can only tell us just so much, and then only if the data are interpreted expertly.
On the other hand, a decidedly non-statistics oriented Garrison Keiler often said that the children of his imaginary town of Lake Woebegone were ‘all above average”. There’s some validity to that. Not mathematically speaking, but in having high regard for your own progeny. Believe in it, but not too much. You can’t quantify love. Nor positive reinforcement. Nor good judgement.
Whatever the statistics tell us about our neighborhood, our income, our race, our religion, or anything else, don’t let it count for too much. Statistics can hide the fact that there are extremely wealthy and extremely poor in every race. There are people of every race who are both richer and poorer than you and me. Don’t just accept the average. To really know, you need to get to know some really poor and some really rich people, and see what cause and effect you can find to explain it. Why do some people succeed, and some fail? Why can some drink, but not become alcoholics, while others can’t? It couldn’t hurt to do some statistical analysis, but that is no substitute for assessing the individuals themselves. We are individuals, every one of us different. Statistics isn’t good at assessing that individuality. On average, I’m the only one of me there is. That goes for you, too.
Comments?
Great points from the Radical Individualist...
I've noticed that the wealthy can be ***holes as well as kind.... as can the poor. It may be easier to lay a blanket rule upon classes of people--if only we could recognize people as individuals.
Speaking of stats, a local radio station here plays a promo that says, "Eight out of ten people make up 80% of the population." lol... stats...
A couple of years ago, I read that a poll showed that 87% of people consider themselves to be of above average intelligence.