Americans’ net worth surged at a historic pace from 2019 to 2022, a reflection of the pandemic era’s tremendous economic swings and the wealth generated from homeownership and financial assets, according to Federal Reserve data released Wednesday.
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.”
lol at calling wikipedia “your rules” as if I have any ownership of that website.
I never said averages have different meanings. I said there are different types of averages. You really jumped to the weirdest conclusion here. It’s as if I say “there are multiple types of shapes: squares, circles, triangles, etc” and you reply “by your rules, shape has no less than 7 meanings.” No, that’s not what was said and certainly not what was meant to be implied at all.
And to answer your question, specificity isn’t always required, so it’s perfectly acceptable to use the more vague term at times. Other times, it creates confusion or ambiguity, so it’s better to use a more specific word. If someone said “average,” I’d probably assume they meant the most common type of average: mean. That might be a wrong assumption, but thats just how words work. Some are more specific than others.
I answered your question in a quick edit. Quit acting like this case is in any way unique. You’re just looking for any excuse to object to this widely accepted broader definition of the word.
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.
I’m with you basically and was also taught average = mean. If you meant median or mode you had to say so. 🤷♀️ This feels like when I learned my blood isn’t blue because it’s deoxygenated lol
This is why average is a shit metric for this.
Well, the mean is a bad average to use. The median would be an average more representative of the general population.
But they did use median.
Oh. Good.
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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.”
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lol at calling wikipedia “your rules” as if I have any ownership of that website.
I never said averages have different meanings. I said there are different types of averages. You really jumped to the weirdest conclusion here. It’s as if I say “there are multiple types of shapes: squares, circles, triangles, etc” and you reply “by your rules, shape has no less than 7 meanings.” No, that’s not what was said and certainly not what was meant to be implied at all.
And to answer your question, specificity isn’t always required, so it’s perfectly acceptable to use the more vague term at times. Other times, it creates confusion or ambiguity, so it’s better to use a more specific word. If someone said “average,” I’d probably assume they meant the most common type of average: mean. That might be a wrong assumption, but thats just how words work. Some are more specific than others.
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I answered your question in a quick edit. Quit acting like this case is in any way unique. You’re just looking for any excuse to object to this widely accepted broader definition of the word.
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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.
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Communicating more effectively with the world requires you to meet the world where it’s at.
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I’m with you basically and was also taught average = mean. If you meant median or mode you had to say so. 🤷♀️ This feels like when I learned my blood isn’t blue because it’s deoxygenated lol
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They used median