All of this is obviously total, laughable horseshit if you think about it for three seconds or have the slightest acquaintance with the actual numbers, but people agree with the POINT, so it’s getting traction. In case you thought misinfo gullibility was only for the right.
Look, I’m just saying, if you’re gonna point & laugh at Trump’s bipedal livestock for parroting whatever obvious gibberish they’re fed—and you should!—don’t excuse spreading viral numbers equally pulled out of someone’s ass because, like, the vibe is right, man.
And yes, I’m probably being excessively harsh about some trivial rando meme. We live in a generally depressing information environment and I decided to lash out at this instance of it.
My woke* boomer multi-STEM-PhD-holding aunt-in-law shared this one credulously today and I made a similar comment. She did at least say she was frazzled and would have to evaluate it in the morning after sleep.
*Not to use that as a rufo-esque slander. Im far more comfortable with woke than fash
Anyway, @besttrousers.bsky.social, we never spoke on other website, but it was a regular ritual of mine to browse your likes Over There. I learned a lot! It's a shame that's not a thing anymore. You had some good likes.
Median income is the amount which divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, & half having income below that amount. Mean income (average) is the amount obtained by dividing the total aggregate income of a group by the number of units in that group.
Both of those are averages in the statistical sense, with different methods. You're using average in the colloquial sense, which people only associate with mean because that's all most laypeople are familiar with. It's just that mean is never used in income analysis.
Okay, so the original, now-deleted meme that the OP was responding to, just used the word "average". The meme was clearly inaccurate, but the effect that it was describing, if you take off the highest incomes and recalibrate, the "average" income will go down, is true if you are using the mean, (1)
not the median. So responding, "that's not how medians work, you knob" is assuming that the meme maker meant median when it seems clear they really meant the mean average. They are probably a layperson after all.
medians are indeed a kind of average. "average" is used refer to at least five different things: mean, median, mode, geometric mean, and midrange, and maybe even some i'm forgetting
not all rectangles are squares etc.
I started to give you a big thumbs up, but thank you for seeing the point of the meme.
Also, I'm a cartoon horse on the internet. I'm full of horseshit.
If I were both innumerate and cowardly, I too might try to pretend that my witless repetition of an obvious lie was deliberate and clever rather than having the basic minimal
dignity to admit error. Hope that works out for you champ.
