Comment on Nearly half of U.S. adults believe LLMs are smarter than they are.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoThat was back when “average” was the wrong word because it still meant the statistical “mean” - the value all data points would have if they were identical. What Carlin meant was the “median” - the value in the exact middle of the range of values. Over the years the word “average” has devolved to either the mean or median, as if they’re the same.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
When talking about a large, regularly distributed population, there effectively IS no difference
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There might be no difference. In memes or casual conversation the difference usually doesn’t matter, but when thinking about important things like government policy or medical science, the difference between mean and median is very important - which is why they both exist.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A joke is definitely casual conversation
Mathematically, the difference becomes increasingly statistically insignificant as your population size increases. Sure maybe there’s a few niche cases where a hundred-thousandth of a percent difference matters, but that’s not even worth bringing up.
The only reason any of you even bring it up is to try and sound smart in a pedantic, “ackshually” way.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We all have our idiosyncracies. For some it’s being overly technical, for others it’s imagining negative motivations.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not in all cases. When I teach mean, median and mode, I usually bring up household income. Mean income is heavily skewed by outliers (billionaires), median is a more representative measure.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
IQ is though
andros_rex@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
IQ is also garbage when it comes to the validity of what it claims to measure.