It’s perfectly possible for 90% of schools to be above average (after all, more than 90 percent of adults have more than the average number of arms).
There are three kind of people in the world: those that can count, and those that can’t.
As far as I am aware, ‘average’ is a general term that can include both mean and median.
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And mode.
For a normal distribution.
Worse, 50% of doctors graduated in the lower half of their classes! :eek:
:smack:
Math is hard.
Wrong.
An average is any mathematical function that takes a set of numbers and returns one and ONLY one number that
[ul]
[li]Is between the minimum and maximum value[/li][li]If a new data point that is smaller than the average is added to the set, the function will return a value smaller than or equal to the original value[/li][li]If a new data point that is larger than the average is added to the set, the function will return a value greater than or equal to the original value[/li][li]If a new data point that is equal to the average is added to the set, the function will return a value equal to the original value[/li][/ul]
In colloquial usage, the mode can indeed be referred to as an “average.”
Cites:
From Merriam-Webster:
From Wikipedia:
As above, ‘average’ doesn’t have much meaning on its own. It’s a measure of how ‘typical’ or ‘representative’ something is. In many cases, the mean or median handles this. In other cases, the mode can be this quantity. In some cases, none of these produces a representative or typical quantity.
A simple example is the ‘average’ pixel on a screen full of white noise static. You can say that the ‘gray’ pixel with mean RGB values is the average but the concept of average itself is misleading in this case, even if one can compute a mean or median or mode or whatever. There’s no ‘typical’ pixel in pure white noise and while the mean value can have mathematical meaning, it only does so within some context. It’s not universal.
But yes, the question in the OP is :smack:. It would not have worked with my brother until yesterday, since that was his birthday.
Same here. Born 1970 + 47 = 2017. Not until your birthday are the numbers going to line up.
And your cites show why mode is NOT an average. An average has only one value. A set may have multiple modes or none at all.
Most of us knew that 2+2 = 4 but how many of us were really aware that 3+1 also = 4? Huh?
You’re arguing with the English language on the basis of logic or a technical definition? How long have you been speaking English?
Mean, median, and mode have all been a type of “average” in colloquial usage as long as I’ve ever known it. When people talk about an “average person” or something being done “on average,” it can be any of those three things, depending on which supports the point they are making the best.
Just right now, I googled “types of averages” and the first result, the big highlighted one, even says “There are three main types of averages: mean […] mode […] median […]” so this is hardly an atypical usage.
2017 for me. I guess that means the very fabric of the universe has been ruptured. If we can’t believe things we read on Facebook, we’re doomed.
Mean, median and mode are all measures of central tendency. Average usually refers the first, sometimes refers to the second and rarely refers to the last. But it happens. With enough frequency to be part of the list.
I’ve seen average to mean “Halfway between the maximum and minimum”, in a (light) novel. Though admittedly the protagonist thought that such a application of that term was forehead smacking.
Well, it only happens in leap years.
It will never happen again that if you add your year of birth to your age you will get 2018. So the OP is wrong; it will not happen again in 2000 years. And next year you will be able to add your age to your year of birth and get … 2019. Amazing!