I was looking up the average networth of 30 year olds in the United States and it said: “The average net worth is $122,000 and the median net worth is $35,112” my brain is too smooth please help.
In: 8
A median looks at all the entries, lines them up in order, and takes the middle one. There will always be 50% of entries above the median, and 50% below.
An average (arithmetic mean) takes all the values, adds them together and divides by the total number of entries.
The median doesn’t care about values, the mean doesn’t care about entries.
If we have the set 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1000
The median is 5, but the mean is 115. Only one entry is above 115, but there are 4 entries above 5 and 4 below 5.
The median and mean will be the same number if you have either a normal distribution, a uniform distribution, or and infinite number of entries.
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