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.
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*Median* is one type of average. You put all the sample into order and then the median is at the halfway mark. For income it means half the population earn more and half earn less.
*Mean* is another type of average – you add all the sample values together and then divide by the number of samples. The number might not be what any individual sample scores.
Median is useful for things like income and wealth as it cuts off the outlier values. Eg for income a handful of billionaires can radically skew the result to show a much higher income or wealth than any ordinary person is realistically on.
Mean is useful for a lot of statistical analysis, and for some types of average when the distribution of results follows a certain pattern and there are either no outliers or outliers are balanced.
There’s another average called “Mode” – this is the value that’s most common. Mode is more for things where the samples can’t really be put into order – eg what color is the average car. Median doesn’t work. Mean would be weird. Mode is more useful here.
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