this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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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]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

Mode is a kind of average. I infer that you mean "mean" when you say "average" here.

The mean takes into account outliers in a way that the mode doesn't.

The joke about the average number of legs among humans being less than 2 describes a situation where mode provides more meaning than mean. In the case of scattered values, mode makes less sense, such as the average net worth of the people in a country.

I don't know why the mean is the "default" average. In many situations, the mode or median makes more sense.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mean is the default "average" because it's easy to calculate and were taught it first in school. Like, years before median or mode. That's it, that's the whole reason.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That makes perfect sense to me. I should have known it was that boring.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Poor old Chebychev is not getting much love here is he.

I guess people might think he was a fan of inequality. (sorry - maths joke, at least I didn't do the one about the LOL numbers).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I didn't get that far in probability and statistics. I know of his polynomials, but that was a long time ago.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Mode also is only similar to median in a normal distribution. Anything else and mode and median are very different.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

such as the average net worth of the people in a country.

And the mean average makes no sense here either, which is why incomes and wealth are almost always quoted as medians instead of means, unless they're totals which is a roundabout way of reporting the mean (if you know the population baseline).

The more unequal a country, the larger the difference between mean and median incomes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Sorry, i meant mean, but yeah mode definitely seems better to me, you are very unlikely to find a person/thing who/that has average qualities/stats

Edit: mean only seems good to create kind of a middle line of some sort

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Now I understand better how you're thinking. Indeed, the notion of "what the average person has" is answered better by the median, but the notion of "What's most typical" is answered by the mode.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Well, the middle line is the median. 😉