[ruswick]

You're asserting that, simply because people are capable of holding down jobs, owning homes and producing kids, that the general stigmatization of sciences and pervasive anti-intellectualism is insignificant because people can still intuit what constitutes as good and bad education and policy? This is absurd. Just because people may be capable of functioning in the real world without access to scientific knowledge does not meant that we shouldn't pursue the proliferation of such knowledge. Whether people need to know what Dihydrogen Monoxide is is largely inconsequential. Insofar as scientific knowledge is, unto itself, a good thing, policymakers should strive to promote it, regardless of its practical implications.

It's preferable to be an informed functioning citizen than an uninformed functioning citizen, despite the fact that they are both capable of doing their jobs every day.

As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence.

[philh]

> As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence.

If intelligence is normally distributed, then the mean and median are equal.

[learc83]

>As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence.

Not false. Median is a type of average. He never said half the population is below the arithmetic mean.

[Karunamon]

>Not false. Median is a type of average

?? I thought those were two distinct things. The median is the "middle" amount in a set of numbers, while the average or mean is the sum of all the numbers in the set, divided by how many numbers there are.

[learc83]

Arithmetic mean, geometric mean, median, mode etc... those are all specific methods of finding the average.

The most common average in ordinary use is the arithmetic mean, but they are not the same thing and the word average is much more general.

[ruswick]

In coloquial terms, the average is synonymous with the mean, and the median is treated as distinct. Moreover, if he truly meant that half of the population was below the median, why would he use an ambiguous term like the "average?" At worst, it's incorrect, and at best, it's an ambiguity that is not necessarily correct.

[learc83]

> at best, it's an ambiguity that is not necessarily correct.

It is definitively correct.

You knew what he meant, you just wanted another jab to back up your argument. If you're going to be pedantic at least be correct.

Let's divide the world into 3 types of people.

Type A. Those without enough mathematical knowledge to pick up on any possible ambiguity. Who probably don't really know what median means in the first place (the majority of people).

Type B. Those with enough mathematical knowledge to understand what he means by "average." (probably the majority of people on hacker news)

Type C. Those who got just far enough in math to realize that there is a difference between arithmetic mean, and median, but not far enough to realize that average is a general term.

Which of those types are going to confused by the term average instead of median?