On 12/8/25 9:56 AM, John Hasler wrote:
The Wanderer writes:
The overall point is still valid, however; it would just need to be
phrased differently. I'm not having much success thinking of *how* to
phrase it, but I think that might be because of how recently I woke
up...
Half the population is below the median. For a normal distribution the
median equals the mean. "Average" usually means the mean but not
always.
First, appreciation for the original post that started this thread.
Second, would "dumping" the list of interest into an AI machine:
would that have any value? Would qualifying words as to what
field of interest help? What use of followup questions with
the AI machine be helpful? Just a thought.
Third, for the chance to comment about the post quoted above
that is part of this thread. If the population is an odd number of
people and the median value has only one person or entry, then
less than half the people are above the median and less than
half the people are below the median. Better yet is 100 people
take a test and 99 people get a grade of 100 percent but one
person gets zero, then the arithmetic mean is 99, and
coincidentally 99 people are above the mean, and only 1
is below the mean. Of course, it goes to the other extreme
if 99 people score zero and 1 person scores 100.
Actually, I find this interesting, because the it has been pointed
out that the original claim may have been based on a normal distribution.
How many things do we do with implied, unconscious, sub-conscious
assumptions, axioms, premises, etc., that we just accept and move
on? On the other hand, how many more headaches would people
have if they did not operate in this manner. Left unanswered is
how much things would change if we did not use heuristics.
