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From: Wes Groleau on 8 Jun 2010 19:31 On 06-08-2010 19:27, dorayme wrote: > In article<humhqa$b5l$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > John McWilliams<jpmcw(a)comcast.net> wrote: > >> Wes Groleau wrote: >>> On 06-08-2010 17:06, Davoud wrote: >>>> I read >>>> just yesterday that 63% of Americans think they are smarter than the >>>> average American >>> >>> So 79% of us are correct! I'd say that's pretty smart. :-) >> >> I used to be good at math, arithmetic, even trig. ... but am whooshing >> on the concept here. >> Help! Please. > > If there were only 100 Americans and one of them was almost > omnintelligent and the rest almost totally moronic and 63 thought > they were more than average-American-smart, at least 62 could be > wrong and only those of the 38 rest who actually had an opinion > on the matter would be correct. Depends on which definition of "average" you want to use. OK, it was not a very good joke. Let's not make it worse by analyzing it to death. :-) On second thought, this is Usenet. When in Rome, ... -- Wes Groleau Hispanics Hold the Key to Texas' Economic Future http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/russell?itemid=1564
From: John McWilliams on 8 Jun 2010 19:59 Wes Groleau wrote: > On 06-08-2010 18:56, John McWilliams wrote: >> Wes Groleau wrote: >>> On 06-08-2010 17:06, Davoud wrote: >>>> I read >>>> just yesterday that 63% of Americans think they are smarter than the >>>> average American >>> >>> So 79% of us are correct! I'd say that's pretty smart. :-) >> >> I used to be good at math, arithmetic, even trig. ... but am whooshing >> on the concept here. > > First things first--it's a joke. > > Now to ruin it by explaining it... > > The definition of average means that 50% are smarter. (Oversimplified) > > So, 63 of a hundred think they are above average, but 13 of those are > wrong. That makes the other fifty correct. > > Fifty is 79% of 63. > > Of course, there are details that make my analysis wrong, > but it's a joke, so who cares? Yokay, I knew you was joshing, but didn't grok the basis till now. -- john mcwilliams
From: Wes Groleau on 9 Jun 2010 11:41
On 06-09-2010 10:09, Michelle Steiner wrote: > Bingo. I was sure that some people understood what I demonstrating. As > you pointed out, many people think that "average" means "median", whereas > it actually means "arithmetic mean". It means both, and probably a few other things. But my joke, were it actually serious, takes into account that in theory, the median, mode, and mean are all the same for IQ. -- Wes Groleau A short talk on children and education http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/barrett?itemid=1593 |