OFF: Re: HW: Tour Shirts

[Paul Mather]

On Wed, 2004-04-28 at 12:53, M Holmes wrote:
> Paul Mather writes:

> > But, I would caution against using appeals to the "average" in such
> > logic, especially when directed towards natural/sociological
> > phenomena.  Such distributions are often not Normal (i.e., Gaussian),
> > which aligns naturally with our popular notion of "fairness" and
> > "balance."  With a statement like "assume the average wage is 20K," I
> > would be much happier if you'd at the very least used the median.
>
> Fair point sir, but it wouldn't really make much difference to my argument
> in this case.

Agreed.  In fact it would bolster it, as in such a skewed distribution
the median income is less than the mean income.

(Of course, those at the upper tail of the distribution are gambling
more, and hence have more of an incentive to ensure that their chosen
candidate wins.)

Cheers,

Paul.
--
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa