Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Writers seem to struggle to express the lot of the average person.

Let’s talk about the average savings of an American in their 50s, i.e., born in the 1970s. We want to understand their lot in life and all that. The figures are somewhere.

Hmm, average means to sum everyone’s savings and divide by the number of people. Well, the figures state the average savings is between $1 million and $1.5 million. Below the average? Probably. Yikes. Well, look at the definition. Elon Musk is in his 50s. His wealth (a trillion dollars or something like that?) raises the average quite a bit.

The median savings is a better number (as I judge good, better, and best). It is about $300,000 or a third to a fifth the average. You see, median is calculated by…

Stop. I don’t want to get into the definition of median. Take a statistics course or Google it or something. Median is a better measure than average.

Except I have to explain “median” before using it. Aargh.

The word we want is “typical.” That doesn’t have a good definition in a statistics textbook. We all, however, understand what “typical” typically means. It is typical. Got it? Good. Let’s move on. We can do better.