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In article , Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Jim Lesurf
saying something like:

Interesting that such errors and muddles should propagate into such
sources.

Particularly odd for a 'dictionary' to say that a series of things that
have quite different meanings in statistics are 'synonyms'. Perhaps
they don't even know the meaning of 'synonym'. :-)

Oh well, given that 'English' ends up being defined by useage I assume
this will become established as the general usage. Not unusual for
terms in daily common use to be assigned a different meaning to when
specialists use the same word. a la muddles over 'weight' and 'mass'
and of course 'energy' and 'power'.

Now, perhaps you see what I was on about.

I did before. I didn't say it was *right* that meanings evolve or depend on
context. That depends on the context... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
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Jim Lesurf wrote:

Is your point that no-one ever uses the term "the average", or even "on
average"?

No, people use the term all the time, and in non-technical language when
someone says "average" or "the average" they almost always mean
arithmetic mean, and sensible people understand that.

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On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:42:21 +0100, Andy Burns
wrote:

Jim Lesurf wrote:

Is your point that no-one ever uses the term "the average", or even "on
average"?

No, people use the term all the time, and in non-technical language when
someone says "average" or "the average" they almost always mean
arithmetic mean, and sensible people understand that.

I've been pondering on that. I think that the expression "the average
person" carries with it ideas that are similar to the median and mode.
The person is felt to be equidistant between the extremes (perhaps
ignoring wilder extremes) - median-ish, and representative of a large
number of people in the centre - mode-ish.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

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In article , Peter Duncanson
wrote:
Is your point that no-one ever uses the term "the average", or even "on
average"?

No, people use the term all the time, and in non-technical language when
someone says "average" or "the average" they almost always mean
arithmetic mean, and sensible people understand that.

I've been pondering on that. I think that the expression "the average
person" carries with it ideas that are similar to the median and mode.
The person is felt to be equidistant between the extremes (perhaps
ignoring wilder extremes) - median-ish, and representative of a large
number of people in the centre - mode-ish.

You're all talking like mathematicians and engineers. I think many people
(the average person?) would probably understand "average" to mean
"ordinary". Ask a few and see if I'm right.

Personally I think a better generic meaning would be "representative", since
the original purpose of an average was to provide a single numerical value
that represented a range of them.

Rod.
--
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Roderick Stewart writes:

You're all talking like mathematicians and engineers. I think many people
(the average person?) would probably understand "average" to mean
"ordinary". Ask a few and see if I'm right.

Such as the "average" family having 2.4 children? A family with 2.4
children would be far from ordinary.

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In article , Andy
Burns
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:

Is your point that no-one ever uses the term "the average", or even
"on average"?

No, people use the term all the time, and in non-technical language when
someone says "average" or "the average" they almost always mean
arithmetic mean, and sensible people understand that.

Ok. So is your point that no-one, say, teaching/learning gce O level says
"the average" or "on average"?

As I've previously agreed, I can quite understand that in general use
people may make no distinction (and have no real clue what they mean). The
problem is when this muddle slops over into areas where the distinctions
*do* matter, or when it leads to errors.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

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On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:14:20 +0100, Graham Murray
wrote:

Roderick Stewart writes:

You're all talking like mathematicians and engineers. I think many people
(the average person?) would probably understand "average" to mean
"ordinary". Ask a few and see if I'm right.

Such as the "average" family having 2.4 children? A family with 2.4
children would be far from ordinary.

Indeed. That is a mathematical average.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

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On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:51:25 +0100, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

In article , Peter Duncanson
wrote:
Is your point that no-one ever uses the term "the average", or even "on
average"?

No, people use the term all the time, and in non-technical language when
someone says "average" or "the average" they almost always mean
arithmetic mean, and sensible people understand that.

I've been pondering on that. I think that the expression "the average
person" carries with it ideas that are similar to the median and mode.
The person is felt to be equidistant between the extremes (perhaps
ignoring wilder extremes) - median-ish, and representative of a large
number of people in the centre - mode-ish.

You're all talking like mathematicians and engineers. I think many people
(the average person?) would probably understand "average" to mean
"ordinary". Ask a few and see if I'm right.

Of course. We are discussing the confusion and difference between the
ordinary person's use of the word average and the mathematician's use.

Personally I think a better generic meaning would be "representative", since
the original purpose of an average was to provide a single numerical value
that represented a range of them.

Rod.

--
Peter Duncanson
(in uk.tech.digital-tv)

Richard Desmond buys Channel Five
 

In article ,
Graham Murray wrote:

You're all talking like mathematicians and engineers. I think many people
(the average person?) would probably understand "average" to mean
"ordinary". Ask a few and see if I'm right.

Such as the "average" family having 2.4 children? A family with 2.4
children would be far from ordinary.

Yes: that's why people find the figure funny and memorable. If they
didn't think of "average" as meaning "a representative example"
there'd be nothing amusing about it.

-- Richard

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In article , Graham Murray
scribeth thus
Roderick Stewart writes:

You're all talking like mathematicians and engineers. I think many people
(the average person?) would probably understand "average" to mean
"ordinary". Ask a few and see if I'm right.

Such as the "average" family having 2.4 children? A family with 2.4
children would be far from ordinary.

I thought the 2.4 was .. nod 'wink, a bit of the other;?..
--
Tony Sayer