[bryanrasmussen]

>a lot of engineers in a lot of companies

>have at best average IQ if not lower.

my reading of a lot is always more than 50%, which implies to me that more than half of the engineers at half of the companies have average IQ or lower - which seems unlikely.

on edit: unless of course we assume that development / engineering type careers attracted more people of average IQ or lower - but I think that will be a hard sell on HN.

[nfw2]

> My reading of a lot is always more than 50%

So if I said there were a lot of homicides in NYC last year, you would think that over 4 million people were killed?

[midasuni]

I’d think there were more last year than the average per year

[bryanrasmussen]

I guess not, but without context as I said in the other comment I jump to reading it as most.

[CRConrad]

Well, stop that then.

[thaumasiotes]

> my reading of a lot is always more than 50%, which implies to me that more than half of the engineers at half of the companies have average IQ or lower - which seems unlikely.

That depends. It's unlikely that they have at most the average IQ of the general population.

But if we assume that engineers as a group are smarter than the general population, it follows immediately that over half of them are below average among engineers. If you mostly work with engineers, that will probably look like "below average".

[eru]

> But if we assume that engineers as a group are smarter than the general population, it follows immediately that over half of them are below average among engineers.

Well, depends a bit on the shape of the distribution, because of mean vs median. But you are right enough for most reasonable distributions.

[alpaca128]

> my reading of a lot is always more than 50%

That's what the word "most" is for. A lot only means something like "large amount", with no hint at how large. It could be more than half, it could also be 1% because that's still a lot of people.

[bryanrasmussen]

yeah if there's a context to a lot, as per the previous example of homicides, you can understand what a lot of homicides will be in relation to homicide rates in other places.

So if you don't really have an easy to understand context I don't know if 1% would be considered a lot.

Let's imagine the HN conversation:

a lot of people love the fruitcake they receive for Christmas!

I checked Santa's bureau of statistics - only 1% love fruitcake - is that what you call a lot?!?

So I guess I agree a lot doesn't have to be more than half, but when I don't have an easy to identify context I read a lot as being most. Surely my mistake, but one I feel is hard to guard against.