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You have GOT to be fucking with me.
I mean, I think I might be able to decipher what you might be trying to say but you typed the sentence "the mean is a bad average to use."
You know mean and average are synonyms... right?
Edit: My wife has just informed me that an article off Google says that in Finance and Sports Statistics, the term Average is used synonymous with Descriptive Statistics.
Having worked as a statistician in the past, my firm knowledge was that Mean/Average, median, mode, count, and range together form the family of Descriptive Statistics.
This hurts my brain so bad...
There are really people out there calling Descriptive Statistics and Averages synonyms? Do those people never use average to mean mean? Or do they use Average to mean both mean and Descriptive Statistic.
My brain is word souping so hard.
Mean is one type of average. Median and mode are other types of average, so there’s nothing incorrect about saying “mean is a bad average” since it differentiates “mean” from “median” and “mode.”
I did an edit acknowledging this and I am struggling HARD to accept it.
By your rules, Average has no less that 7 meanings.
By your rules, average is a useless word that doesn't really convey anything.
But I am on notice that a lot of people are buying into this.
Please answer for me though. In your mind, is average one of the 5+ kinds of averages? Or do you only refer to mean when you are referencing that... (I really hate conceding that this is a thing) "average".
To repeat. For over 20 years, in my world, mean and average mean "a set of values added together and divided by the count of values", and mean/average, median, mode, range, and count are Descriptive Statistics. So when I say "average", you know what I just said. I didn't just say a meaningless thing (seemingly to waste time and be confusing to understand) that requires me to specify if I meant mean, median, mode, range, or count.
I agree with your sentiment, but I'll say I'm in my 30s and in grade school they definitely taught us mean/median/mode as being ways to measure the average. That said, I do also use average to mean mean as that's what something like Excel calls it and that's what most people think of when measuring average unless you specify otherwise. So that's all to say, yeah it's a bit messed up.
Right. The whole linguistic cluster fuck in my head is "mean and average are synonymous, and that measure is a descriptive statistic."
Accepting that average is synonymous with Descriptive statistic, not mean is troubling me.
My real fear is someone who calls a descriptive statistic an average is about to say to me that average and mean are synonyms as well, and that's when I'm ready to flip a table.
Your brain can't be healthy if you call average a descriptive statistic AND a mean.
Just learn the term descriptive statistic. Make your brain healthier. Communicate more efficiently with the world...
Communicating more effectively with the world requires you to meet the world where it's at.
I'd feel you if efficacy and efficiency weren't mutually dependent to me.