Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Contrary to the Lake Wobegon Effect, the average fill-in-the-blank-noun-for-a-person is average.

Something I recently realized:

The average fill-in-the-blank-noun-for-a-person is average.

Here are some examples:

• The average doctor is average
• The average teacher is average
• The average writer is average
• The average engineer is average

and so on.

This all contradicts the Lake Wobegon Effect whereby all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average. It also contradicts what I have heard about the U.S. Navy, or was it the U.S. Army or the U.S. Air Force, where all the officers are in the upper third. No one was ever able to answer “the upper third of what?” but that is beside the point.

No, sorry folks, but the average fill-in-the-blank-noun-for-a-person is average.

Now we can argue that the average doctor (MD) is smarter than the average lawn mower repairman. That may be true until you set a broken lawn mower in front of the two of them. At such a time…well you know.

This Law of the Average fill-in-the-blank-noun-for-a-person can be quite troubling for specialists. Yes, there are millions (?) of teachers in America, but there are far fewer Russian teachers than there are English teachers in America. Being the specialists that they are, the Russian teachers like to feel a sense of better than average. Sorry, the average Russian teacher is average.

If I thought long enough, perhaps I could find an exception to this Law of the Average fill-in-the-blank-noun-for-a-person. Perhaps the exception is that the average PhD engineer who blogs about odds and ends and averages is above average at something. On second thought, perhaps not.