Doesn’t using mode just make a lot more sense? You are much more likely to be the mode than you are likely to be average in the mean class

[Originally said average in the title, fixed thanks to jbrains]

  • fastandcurious@lemmy.worldOP
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    10 months ago

    Actually I think that the notion ‘what the average person has’ is bettered answered by mode, I feel like mean is better for kind of plotting a data or points to find a ‘trend’ or something like that, I am hella confused now actually

    • jbrains
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      10 months ago

      The mode can’t hope to answer how much money the average person has, because there are far too many possible values.

      The mean answers how much money people have on average, but the outliers exert too much influence to answer how much money the average person has.

      The median moderates the influence of both the very rich and the very poor, so it better approximates the amount of money that those in the middle of the population have, which is what 'the average person" tends to be.

      For populations where the number of possible values is much lower, the mode and the median tend to be closer to together. Emphasis on “tend”.