Klarinet Archive - Posting 000764.txt from 2000/12

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: Re: RE: Re: [kl] Stand or Sit?
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 19:05:08 -0500

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 03:36:26 EST, A4ACHESON@-----.com said:

> In a message dated 13/12/00 3:01:22 pm, Tony wrote:
>
> > Actually, most people have more than the average number of legs.
>
> So?

It was meant to be, well, not a joke, but a 'what?!!'-type realisation
of an indubitable truth about averages.

Statistics, as you probably know, is something of a minefield
intuitively. Compare:

30% of road accidents involve someone under the influence of alcohol.
But that means that 70% of road accidents *don't* involve someone under
the influence of alcohol.
*Therefore*, you're better off pissed.

(This last in the British sense -- 'loaded', for Americans, perhaps?)

> > .... Did the aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
>
> Thank you Tony.
> Up that certainly clears everything. [I'm now keeping an eye out for
> the grammar police.]

Sorry about that. The tagline generator is automatic, and I decide
sometimes to remove it. Perhaps this one would have been better off
removed. I was so busy wondering what it actually meant that I left it.

> To those with sufficient knowledge of statistics to distinguish
> between/among [take your pick] *average*, *median*, and *mode*, my
> apologies for the common [mis]use of the word *average*. Perhaps
> *generally* is the word I should have used. I promise to be more
> careful in future. Arthur A
>
> P.S. What I wrote was <<Because, on average, we have two legs.>> Note
> the parenthesis. When I wrote *we*, I was not writing about *most
> people*, I was writing of humankind.

Arthur, I was only kidding. But it might have been offensive to people
with only one leg, or even no legs, I now see, so I apologise.

I think that it's useful to understand those words, if only to have a
handle on the idea that 'average' may not be the best way of capturing
what is 'general' about a collection. (For those who are wondering what
we're on about, 'average' of a collection of values means 'add 'em all
up and divide by the number of them'; 'median' means the value such that
half of them are above it and half below it; and 'mode' means the value
taken by the greatest number of them.)

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

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