I was having a conversation with my best friend and they said that the average height is a subject thing bc in order for it to be objective they need to have study or gotten all the heights from every man in American. I’m not certain how data or stats work. But maybe it’s objective only by those who have been tested on average? Idk how to explain it to them or if I’m wrong help me understand a bit better.
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Your friend seems to have the wrong impression of what “subjective” means.
A study of average heights if run correctly would be “objective”
This does not require that every single person in the world be measured.
There is basically nothing in science that does that.
Rather, for studies like that a “sample” of people are measured.
Basically, if you randomly picked a big enough bunch of people, the odds that you got (un)lucky , and for example: picked only tall people, are low enough that you can start making generalizations about the entire population.
Science will also make a note that based on how small your bunch is, what’s the biggest amount you’re likely to be wrong by.
Now sampling isn’t perfect, in addition to random chance there are a whole bunch of ways that a sample could get skewed by a certain way (intentionally or not). But good science notes these and if possible tries to correct them.
I don’t know what a “subjective study” would look like, but probably just a guy going to some countries and coming back and saying: “I think people in country X are really tall”
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