When you were a child, you might have seen a dark brown bottle of a mysterious l

ID: 3303118 • Letter: W

Question

When you were a child, you might have seen a dark brown bottle of a mysterious liquid high on a shelf in your garage, out of your reach. “That’s poison,” a parent might have warned, pointing to the container. “Don’t touch.” It nonetheless had some use. It was there for a reason. This example illustrates a principle: Items that can be misused often have a valid use, and vice versa. An average (e.g. mean, median, and mode) is not an exception; it can be useful, but if it is misused or misinterpreted it can be destructive.

With that in mind the question is: In what way might an average be misused? Alternatively, how might an average be misinterpreted? For instance, how can a misinterpreted average pertain to stereotyping? How can we avoid misuse or misinterpretation of averages? Provide a specific example to illustrate your explanation.

**Please be thorough with your response, this is for a discussion post. At least enough information that I can build upon Thanks!! :) And please don't answer with "Avarage is extremely sensitive to extreme values. Example : Avarage of 1,2,3,4 is 2.5 but , Avarage of 1,2,3,4,100 is 22. So avarage is not a good measure of the data sets containing extreme values." Like I have been responded to with now twice and that is not the correct !!

Explanation / Answer

For explaining the property of a data set required to two major statistical tools. They are the measure of central tendency (average) and dispersion (variance, range etc). The measure of central tendency tells a value which is concentrated by whole data and dispersion to tell the dispersion of whole data from this tendency value. So, using a particular mean median mode (average) depends on the nature of the available data set. If your given data is the frequency of sell od shoes in the market, than the average is 4 for the first data set and 100 for the second data set using "mode".

In what way might an average be misused?

Ans: From the above points, use of an average may be misused when you did not know the actual information of the data.

Alternatively, how might an average be misinterpreted?

Same answer with first.

For instance, how can a misinterpreted average pertain to stereotyping?

Ans: variance is important together with mean

How can we avoid misuse or misinterpretation of averages?

Ans: Check the variability (dispersion) of data.

Provide a specific example to illustrate your explanation.

Ans: In stereotyping, one day the mistake is 100 due to his health condition. It will affect his performance significantly if we check only based on average.

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When you were a child, you might have seen a dark brown bottle of a mysterious l

When you were a child, you might have seen bottles high on a shelf in your garag

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When you were a child, you might have seen a dark brown bottle of a mysterious l

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