• reallynotnick@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I agree with your sentiment, but I’ll say I’m in my 30s and in grade school they definitely taught us mean/median/mode as being ways to measure the average. That said, I do also use average to mean mean as that’s what something like Excel calls it and that’s what most people think of when measuring average unless you specify otherwise. So that’s all to say, yeah it’s a bit messed up.

    • Melkath@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Right. The whole linguistic cluster fuck in my head is “mean and average are synonymous, and that measure is a descriptive statistic.”

      Accepting that average is synonymous with Descriptive statistic, not mean is troubling me.

      My real fear is someone who calls a descriptive statistic an average is about to say to me that average and mean are synonyms as well, and that’s when I’m ready to flip a table.

      Your brain can’t be healthy if you call average a descriptive statistic AND a mean.

      Just learn the term descriptive statistic. Make your brain healthier. Communicate more efficiently with the world…