The Law of Average

This seems to be one law that has no jurisdiction over anything.

Consider this.  A financial adviser in his presentation was making this point.  “My sister and I are runners; we average running twenty miles a week.  She runs forty and I run zero.”  Now you see why this so called law of average does not make sense at all.

I made up this other example about two basketball teams, each with five players.  Team A has one 7-footer and the other four are all 5 ft. 6 in. tall.  Team B players are all 5 ft. 9 in. tall.  Both teams’ average heights are practically the same.  But doesn’t Team A have an advantage - maybe?  I leave that to basketball aficionados out there to debate that.  And again, the law of average may not have jurisdiction over this one either.

Average also lives in the jungle of statistics.  It thrives there by gathering up and organizing other data-denizens into troops and brigades, then declares some of them middle-of-the-roaders. Those below the middle are less than mediocre while those above it develop stiff upper lips.  In other words, the law of average became a discriminatory agent.  It also becomes an aspirational, though not very lofty, inspiration to some – “hey, if I get average, I’ll be just fine”.  In fact, the “average Joe” seems almost an acceptable moniker for anyone who inhabits the median range, in looks, wealth and social status.

Average is also often misused, sometimes to advance an argument, to get someone to feel good when they are depressed, or get him or her to not feel too ambitious – “the average homeowner, after all, does not have a 70-inch TV in their living room, or a mortgage shorter than 30 years”.  The average life span of an American male is 76 years so don’t expect to go much beyond that, but if you do, it’s a bonus, or at least be happy when you get past the expiration date which for many is unattainable.  Now, since the average life span of an American woman is 81, historians should all be women, since they get to observe the whole story for far longer. That is also the main reason that over 90% who buy photo albums or write on their diaries are women. However, I don’t agree with one comedian who said, “The reason women are usually late is because they know they have more time to spend in this world”.

There is something that can be said about average though, which is not so bad.  Average loves company. The spots occupied by the exemplary go-getters, by those at the top of the heap, by the kings or queens of the hill, by the CEOs, etc. are all lonely places, reserved for the very few who truly aspired to be and actually make it there. The majority of the population resides in a bigger community of the average.  The world of the average is a busy place.  A lot of things happen there.  The buck may stop at the very top but it gets tossed around, passed from one to another, in the area of the average where the plentiful choose to live.  The average sets up a trend. They determine the marketplace.  Mass production is solely dedicated to provide them whatever they want. The average influences a lot of what goes on. The average voter determines the next president.  Not even the incumbent president has the same power.  The average determines whether a movie becomes a block buster, or a product launch is a success or not.  There is so much the average does.

What about this? Is the average a standard? It is if all it does is give us a relative position from where everyone is.  Garrison Keillor’s radio broadcast closes with this, "Well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." That has always been how Keillor closes his show and obviously people find it funny. It is comedic but will it work given an ideal place where indeed the first two phrase-statements can be true - Lake Wobegon can be a stand-alone place where all the women are indeed strong and the men good looking.  It is, however, impossible to have all the children as above average.  For that you’ll have to bring in all the surrounding towns’ children in the entire state, collect data and make relative comparisons.  Once we start on that road, average makes a mess of all along its path.  We can say, for example, where no one may argue, that all the participants in a popular beauty contest are all beautiful. But it gets messy once we say that from a given general population of women, on a scale of 0 to 10, their average physical attributes are 9.85. What does that say to the rest of the women population? Once we bring in relative comparisons we bring trouble.

There is a commonly phrased statement accepted by many as this, “The average room temperature is 72 deg. F”. It is perhaps true in the developed western countries but only if one were in an air conditioned office or bedroom.  Even so, 72 is probably on the low side because the truth is most bedrooms are probably kept at between 74 and 78 in the summer, and likely at 68 to 70 in the winter – in air conditioned homes.  Suddenly we are getting into the question, “What is the ideal temperature at which the average person feels comfortable?”  That’s another can of worms.  In the tropics, in most third world countries, what would be considered average room temperature may shock those used to living in air conditioned comfort from the developed countries.  Then again, comfort is all relative.

Staying with room temperature but using it as a metaphor, comedians use it to hurl insult as in, “He has average room temperature IQ”.  That is already a bit much in the Fahrenheit scale but can we imagine when that same comedian dishes it out in Europe, where temperatures are expressed in Celsius scale? The insult gets horribly unforgiving. European readers of my blog - there's a number of you out there - know how that feels.

In baseball, a batting average of .250, meaning that a batter gets a hit (and gets on base) one in four times at bat, will get a ball player in the major league.  In basketball, however, shooting free throws at .500 is within the booing range of the fans.  On the other hand, a .900 in gymnastics will not get a gymnast a spot at the podium of victors.  Of course, we are talking apples and oranges here, but only if we mix the numbers.

Then it is to my favorite – the average muzzle velocity of a sneeze for which a study was indeed made. It was determined that the average is 70 miles per hour.  Without the proper context or actual data, we could say that some sneezes were at 60 mph and others at 80 mph in some kind of relative proportions. But we could also say that some sneezes were so gentle as to not even ruffle a feather while others are propelled with hurricane gale forces of 140 mph winds. So, here average could be a great deceiver.

On average it took you about six minutes to read this.  It is a mere fraction of the average amount of time a western person spends surfing the web.  Which is to say that, “On average, it is neither here nor there.”