From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2001-10-26T06:53:32+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23363] Re: [OT] half below average

Hello --

On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Wirianto Djunaidi wrote:

> On Thursday 25 October 2001 03:41 pm, you wrote:
> > On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Joel Neely wrote:
> > > But, unfortunately, not true.
> > >
> > > Half of all X are below the *median*, but not below the average
> > > unless there's a totally symmetric distribution, which rarely
> > > happens in nature.
> >
> > To nitpick the nitpick - things in nature often have a gaussian (normal)
> > distribution, which is indeed symmetric.  Human height, etc, show a normal
> > distribution, and I don't see why programming skill wouldn't.
> >
> > IANAS (I am not a statistican), however.

Hmmmm... does computer programming occur in nature? :-)

> Well, a lot of statistics are good for general presentation, which
> doesn't apply to specific case.
> For example, you can't say that average height of NBA players
> will be 5'9" if the world population average if 5'9" would you?

But the question assumed all along that we're talking about a special
case: namely, the average skill within the community of programmers.
So that would be more like asking: are half the NBA players below the
average NBA player height?  It would be nice to think that half the
programmers in the world are not below the average programming skills
of the general population :-)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav