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rogerflog t1_jdb6ksc wrote

“Average” is often misleading and does not tell the whole story. You have 5 people, ages 19, 20, 21, 22 and 93. The average user is 35 ( Add all ages together and get 175 then divide by 5, which is the number of people in the group. This averages out to 35. ) That’s “well past college age,” as most of us would consider it.

However, we can clearly see that most of the users in our sample group are ages 19-22. The metric that makes more sense to use here is the “Mode” of the sample, which counts how many users belong to the largest group.

In our sample here, the Mode shows that 80% of users are still 19-22 years old, even though the inclusion of someone’s great-great grandmother raises the Average to 35.

People can manipulate numbers like they manipulate emotions; do your research, use multiple sources, trust your instincts, don’t accept someone else’s “truth” at face value.

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drawkbox t1_jdc29mz wrote

Lots teenagers and vampires centuries and centuries old.

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jonhuang t1_jdei9d4 wrote

Sure, but it's not believable that tiktok's user base is 80% kids and 20% folks over 90 years old. There's going to be a normal distribution curve and the mean and median will be close together in this case.

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SomethingMatter t1_jdem7hi wrote

Why would there be a normal distribution curve? The tail on the right goes much further than the tail on the left which tells us that the curve is likely to skew right. That would make the median lower than the mean.

https://www.statology.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/skew6-768x371.png

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rogerflog t1_jdf8yi8 wrote

True you are correct, no normal distribution curve here. Standard normal curve occurs with many natural phenomenon. Intentional actions don’t have to follow a standard normal curve, and usually don’t.

For instance, the speed limit on the interstate by me is 75mph. It’s just my subjective measurement but I’m guessing at least twice as many people are driving 85mph than those that are driving 65mph. Human beings have intentional behavior, so this is just one of many instances that doesn’t follow a standard normal curve.

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