Comment on average physics student vs POTUS 47

• TheRedSpade@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Can’t speak for anyone else, but I was taught that mean, median, and mode are three different types of average.

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  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Oh crap. Translating average to my language yields the same word as mean. But you’re right.

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    • jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Because mean means average. I wouldn’t consider the median or the mode to be an average. Not sure what that commenter means by different “types of average”.

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      • sukhmel@programming.dev ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        What they mean is that all three are different kinds of averaging. This is correct, but I don’t think people in general think ‘median’ when they hear ‘average’

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    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not a native English speaker here. Today I learned, too. Thank you.

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• panda_abyss@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Under a normal distribution/bell curve mean and median are the same.

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  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Considering intelligence/stupidity isn’t defined, it’s a lot to assume that its distribution can be approximated by a Gaussian.

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    • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I don’t totally disagree, I’ve never seen an actual distribution of random iq scores

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      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        And there’s plenty of criticism of IQ tests as a proxy for intelligence, even if we did have the data.

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