• lugal@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        There are different definitions of average and one is median

          • lugal@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            13
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            7 months ago

            No, it wasn’t wrong because it didn’t specify which average was meant. If it was “arithmetic average”, it would be wrong.

            • Lemmeenym@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              7 months ago

              It would still be right. The test results are reported on a normalized curve so all measures of central tendency are all equal.

              • lugal@sopuli.xyz
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                8
                ·
                7 months ago

                “I have a ball”
                “So you have a red ball?”
                “No, it’s green”
                “If you don’t specify then the statement needs to hold for all balls to be correct.”

                And by the way: for the given plot, it is correct for all averages

                • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  7 months ago

                  More like

                  “Balls are orange”
                  “That’s wrong”
                  “Ah but basketballs are balls and they are orange, gotcha”
                  “No, you just said balls, that’s too generic, if you meant basket balls you should have said basket balls.”

        • plandeka@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          11
          ·
          7 months ago

          It’s absolutely not. Median is a value in the middle of a sorted set and average is, well, average. In the set of 1, 7, 10: 7 is median and 6 is average.

          • lseif@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            12
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            7 months ago

            as @force pointed out, ‘average’ has many meanings (haha). of course a lot of the time, average is used as ‘mean’. but…not always!

          • force@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            7 months ago

            Idk man looking up a definition for “average” is like

            1. a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.

            and

            1. Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode. [from c. 1735]

            and

            1 a : a single value (such as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values

            doesn’t look like that dude’s using the word “wrong” to me, a lotta people and mathematicians definitely recall using “average” meaning median

          • Resonosity@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 months ago

            I agree with this. In my stats class in college, we never conflated average and median. They meant two different things.

          • Tabula_stercore@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            7
            ·
            7 months ago

            Such irony that this comment gets downvoted on a meme about failing education

            Even with a simple, yet very clear example

            • efstajas@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              7 months ago

              What’s ironic here is your comment, lol. “Average” can and is absolutely used to say mean or median or any other average that is representative based on the dataset in question. When you ask a statistician to calculate an average of a dataset they probably won’t just go calculate the mean, they’ll think about which value is most appropriate in context.