Average/Median

Why do people get so defensive about not knowing maths? You don't get it in any other field - I don't know a damn thing about music and don't care that my sister is great at it.

My brother is a bloody genius at maths though and I must admit I think that makes him smarter than me. He couldn't do my job in a million years though.

Is maths the true score of intelligience - explaining why your all upset about not knowing some small part of it?
 
clv101 said:
Median is the 7,516th most common word – directly ahead of: asylum, commodity, handy, unexpectedly and lunchtime!

Median is a in more common usage than lunchtime, that you've never heard it says more about who you talk to than the English language.
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1 - the average person uses no more than 5000 words and to say Median is used more than lunchtime is complete BS.
 
Average person? Is that the Mean, Med.... ;)

I'm not saying that - WordCount are based on the British National Corpus. This is a vastly more representative sample of use of the English language that either your's or my personal experience.

To be fair all those words I gave are approximately the same "rank", I hope it was clear that I was being glib stating median was in more common use than lunchtime.
 
Telescopi said:
Why do people get so defensive about not knowing maths? You don't get it in any other field - I don't know a damn thing about music and don't care that my sister is great at it.

My brother is a bloody genius at maths though and I must admit I think that makes him smarter than me. He couldn't do my job in a million years though.

Is maths the true score of intelligience - explaining why your all upset about not knowing some small part of it?
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but knowing the meaning of the words mode mean average median, isn't a test of maths.
 
dmpoole said:
1 - the average person uses no more than 5000 words and to say Median is used more than lunchtime is complete BS.
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Bear in mind that "lunchtime" has many substitute phrases that can be used instead of phrases involving that word... e.g:

"it's time for lunch" / "it's lunchtime"
"We're going for lunch at 12" / "lunchtime is at 12"
"breaktime"
"lunch break"
"what are you doing for lunch?" / "What are you doing at lunchtime"
etc

So while conceptually we expect lunchtime to be a very common word, it's actual usage probably isn't as high as we think, due to a associated phrases being used instead.

Median on the other hand doesn't really have many substitute words which are regularly used. People refrain from using 'average' because it obfuscates the meaning i.e. it could be mistaken for the mean.
 
HangTime said:
Median on the other hand doesn't really have many substitute words which are regularly used. People refrain from using 'average' because it obfuscates the meaning i.e. it could be mistaken for the mean.
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I get around quite a bit.
I've attended 3 College Courses recently and even taught Numeracy in a Juvenile Offenders prison between Sept & Dec last year and I never came across the word Median.
I've never heard the word in a pub, in WH Smiths, in the OCUK shop or even on these forums until now.
That also goes for Mean, Modal or Range.
Of course we hear phrases like 'We have a range of prices in the shop' but to the average person that wouldn't mean taking the smallest price from the biggest price.
 
The Mad Rapper said:
I think your attitude toward my question is dumb, but it takes all sorts I suppose...
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well each to their own - I'm just saying it was a bit dumb on two parts - firstly learning about 'averages' is very basic and taught at schools to 12/13 yr olds IIRC

secondly you're capable of using the internet yet seemingly unaware that typing 'average and median' into google would have answered your question in about 2 seconds - it really didn't require the use of a forum/creation of a topic for discussion

I don't mean to come across as being harsh I guess I'm just rather taken back by the fact people don't know these things.
 
dmpoole said:
I've never heard the word in a pub, in WH Smiths, in the OCUK shop or even on these forums until now.
That also goes for Mean, Modal or Range.
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Oh for sure, as I said in my previous post, it's not a word I've encountered much outside of academic circles (although due to the company I used to keep, I'm sure I've heard it in the pub at least once!). What I'm getting at, is that in the cases where it IS used (scientific papers etc), there aren't many subtitute words which could be used.
 
I was teaching Adult Numeracy & Literacy today at the NHS and not one of the 12 students (age 27 to 58) had heard of them.
On the front page of the Level 2 it tells you what they are.
 
dmpoole said:
1 - the average person uses no more than 5000 words and to say Median is used more than lunchtime is complete BS.
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I heard that the average vocabulary was more like 8-10,000 words, but Googling around it looks like it's even higher. Mind you, the amount you probably use regularly is probably much lower than the total amount you know.

The Sun is written with a working vocabulary of more like 3000 words, as is the Good News Bible.
 
If you'd come up to me and asked what the difference was, I couldn't have told you either. I've been taught it and forgotten, and I'm only 23.

It's really not that unusual for someone to not know this.

Half of you spazzers can't even use apostrophes properly, so I'd take your superior attitude elsewhere if I were you.
 
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