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.
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.
lol at your pun, but is your solution really to stop using “average” all together?
But it’s ok. I do understand the etymological frustration that you’re feeling, but I gotta say just take a step back from your preconceived notions and think if what you’re saying would make sense when applying it more broadly.
If you think we should simply say what we mean, should we remove all broader terms if there are already more specific words? Should we stop referring to dogs and cats as pets or animals or mammals when they already have more specific names? No, because you can refer to a group of cats and dogs as a group of animals (or as mammals to differentiate them from birds or as pets to differentiate them from wild animals). Similarly, you can generalize and speak about all averages together at once. See I just did it here, and the person you originally replied to was also using it to speak more broadly and compare/contrast means and medians. It was merely your narrow definition that caused your confusion.
Holy cow. You are really really trying hard to not make sense of this and being incredibly rude. No one said anyone had to add “descriptive statistics” to their vocabulary. The Wikipedia article I linked in no place said average is used for all statistics. You are making that distinction, and it seems wholly incorrect and nonsensical to me, and I do math for a living, so stop with your insulting implication that the only people who could possibly use average to mean anything other than mean must be too stupid to understand math. (And seriously, fuck you for that implication.)
There’s nothing weasily about someone using average to mean mode. You have simply misunderstood the definition of average, and while I’m kindly trying to help you understand, you are making zero attempt to even try. But at this point, I’m out of patience with you annd your lack effort. I’m frankly tired of watching merely trying to find any excuse to reject the broader definition. Get a fucking grip.
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.
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
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.
Removed by mod
lol at your pun, but is your solution really to stop using “average” all together?
But it’s ok. I do understand the etymological frustration that you’re feeling, but I gotta say just take a step back from your preconceived notions and think if what you’re saying would make sense when applying it more broadly.
If you think we should simply say what we mean, should we remove all broader terms if there are already more specific words? Should we stop referring to dogs and cats as pets or animals or mammals when they already have more specific names? No, because you can refer to a group of cats and dogs as a group of animals (or as mammals to differentiate them from birds or as pets to differentiate them from wild animals). Similarly, you can generalize and speak about all averages together at once. See I just did it here, and the person you originally replied to was also using it to speak more broadly and compare/contrast means and medians. It was merely your narrow definition that caused your confusion.
Removed by mod
Holy cow. You are really really trying hard to not make sense of this and being incredibly rude. No one said anyone had to add “descriptive statistics” to their vocabulary. The Wikipedia article I linked in no place said average is used for all statistics. You are making that distinction, and it seems wholly incorrect and nonsensical to me, and I do math for a living, so stop with your insulting implication that the only people who could possibly use average to mean anything other than mean must be too stupid to understand math. (And seriously, fuck you for that implication.)
There’s nothing weasily about someone using average to mean mode. You have simply misunderstood the definition of average, and while I’m kindly trying to help you understand, you are making zero attempt to even try. But at this point, I’m out of patience with you annd your lack effort. I’m frankly tired of watching merely trying to find any excuse to reject the broader definition. Get a fucking grip.
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.
Removed by mod
Communicating more effectively with the world requires you to meet the world where it’s at.
Removed by mod