Comment on Outliers
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 4 weeks ago
sometimes it is important to show the outlier.
I believe that the US census removes billionaires from their calculations on wage and household income.
Because that would make the mean look towards the outlier. And that might spark some public debate about billionaires and the effect billionaires have on society.
but for some reason they prefer to just remove the outliers from their data to suit their statistics just like science.
I think they don’t so much “remove” them as that billionaires tend to not have their money as “wage income” like the rest of us plebes.
They get “stock options”, which occasionally they can cash out, and then THAT counts as income, while the rest remains in the digital ether where it just auto-magically grows and grows, at the expense of all the wage-earners.
So they aren’t “earning” more (wages) than us, so much as they are treated as an entirely different type of being (capital).
How would making states, towns or neighborhoods look richer cause outrage? For income statistics, median us a much better measure in most cases, because it reflects “the average experience” much better. If you want to highlight income inequality, there’s plenty of other stats you can use, e.g. the percentage of all income going to the top 1%.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
I live in the Jackson Hole, Wyoming area. Here we only have two classes. Rich as fuck (including a ton of billionaires), and barely surviving. If you don’t remove the outliers, this area would never receive any assistance for all those in need.
homesnatch@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
The “median” should cover that unless the super rich are over 50% of the population.