Averagarianism: Difference between revisions

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 The folly of reasoning from the general to the particular with statistics.
-For example, the [[Bill Gates on a bus]] paradox: the  average wealth of 99 bankrupts and one billionaire is ten million dollars. But not one individual in the group has an income anywhere close to ten million dollars.
+For example, the [[Bill Gates on a bus]] paradox: the  ''average'' wealth of 99 bankrupts and one billionaire is ten million dollars. But not one individual in the group has an income anywhere close to ten million dollars. The median wealth is zero. The median effectively discounts outliers either side, so is more likely to represent the “real consensus”.
 See also the “average fighter pilot,” that Gladwellian character from any number of popular science books.
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 Lesson one: do not manage from the average to the particular.
-Then there is the story — oft repeated at a microscale, ''sans doubte'' — of the global investment bank which addressed its gender pay gap by laterally recruiting a new [[general counsel]] for ten million dollars. Remaining victims of pay disparity remained unmoved, and undercompensated. (This is not to say don’t act to correct pay unfairness; just don’t do it by massaging the average. Seek out and rectify, you know, ''actual pay unfairness''. In the particular.)
+Then there is the story — oft repeated at a microscale, ''sans doubte'' — of the global investment bank which addressed its gender pay gap by laterally recruiting a new [[general counsel]] for ten million dollars. Remaining victims of pay disparity remained unmoved, and undercompensated. (This is not to say, “don’t act to correct pay unfairness”; just “don’t do it by massaging the average”. Seek out and rectify, you know, ''actual pay unfairness''. In the particular.)
 Lesson two: ''definitely'' do not manage from the particular to the average.