In my review, I mentioned that Ben Goldacre's book, Bad Science, suffers from a tendency to sneer. Although he usually directs his disrespect at those with whom he disagrees, every once in a while he takes aim at his readers. Take, for example, this footnote in the chapter, "Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things":
I'd be genuinely intrigued to know how long it takes to find someone who can tell you the difference between "mean," "median," and "mode," from where you are sitting right now.
I find that as insulting as some of the dumb questions asked by Sunday School teachers, the kind that have students sitting on their hands not because they don't know then answer, but because it's so basic and obvious they're embarrassed it was even asked of them.
From where I am sitting, I need look no further than my own chair. We learned mean, median, and mode in elementary school, and if I was never clear on exactly when each was considered the best "average" to use, I could certainly define and calculate them. I'd be shocked if Jon and Heather couldn't also. But probably not Jonathan (7), and certainly not Noah (4), Faith (2), or Joy (five days), so I suppose our household average isn't so impressive. In this case, I am smarter (or at least more knowledgeable) than a first grader. (Though if asked about guns, or Star Wars, or several other topics, I'd lose.)
How about at your house?
Your household average may be a little low, but your household mode rocks!
Eric is too funny.
Perhaps I don't give other people enough credit, but I do not think that the average person knows this off the top of their head. The boys know it because Saxon drills it into them, but would I have remembered what median and mode were without the refresher course of teaching it to them? I don't know.
Now that you are moderating comments, you could have a little quiz and see how people do. They wouldn't be able to see other replies until you allowed the comments.
It will probably still be biased towards people who are pretty sure they know the answer though.
It might also be biased towards people who have looked up the answer. ;) In these Internet days you don't have to have saved your old math book to find out.
I would bring down the scores in our house - I couldn't remember what mode was.
But based on the explanation I have received, isn't the mode of your household 0?
D
I'm the nerd here; my degree in Ed Psych included a heap of statistics, but I actually learned this first from my mom (a school teacher) who enjoyed analyzing test scores of elementary students...
Technically, D, you are right, since the pattern for the whole household is: 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0. (That's assuming Jon and Heather both know; they haven't weighed in yet.) But I was so tickled by Eric's answer I wasn't going to quibble. (I'd totally missed my use of the word "average"—and I really wish it had been intentional!)
Mean and median come up in various contexts, so I've never forgotten what those are. I haven't thought about the word "mode" as a mathematical operation probably since middle school, so I'd totally forgotten what it was.
I'll chime in because it not only embarrasses me, but my mother as well. :P I could not define all three. I assume that at one point I could have, given dstb's comment about the Saxon math books. My only defense might be that I always focus on concept and somehow find name unimportant and therefor unmemorable. My math major included no statistics classes . . .
Just remember I expect our children to do a lot better with homeschooling than their parents did. :) Since you (IrishOboe) are much better in math than I am—and always were—I wonder why mean, median, and mode stuck with me. Just one of those things, I guess—like converting between Fahrenheit and Celsius (we called it Centigrade back then), which I also don't think I taught you....
To add to your heap of data on statistical knowledge: I knew mean and median, and guessed mode correctly - but because I can't remember the German word for it I'm guessing we never properly learned it. It may be "Modus."
I think the concept came up once in an image analysis question at Nanosurf, where we wanted to separate small holes in the surface from the surface itself and dirt on the surface. The software we had only allowed separation in relation to the mean height, which was thrown off by the dust on the surface, and someone suggested using the mode to determine the actual surface level. The software didn't allow for that, unfortunately.
