As if politics isn't boring enough for your average Jo, politicians are now having something of an argument over statistics and which of the mean (i.e. average) or the median should be used when assessing the impact of the proposed Local Income Tax on Scottish households.
As tedious as the confrontation may be for some, I admit to being interested in such debates and John Swinney is absolutely correct to insist the Tories should use the median instead of the mean when assessing the impact on a typical Scottish family.
There weren't many classes during my MSc in Statistics that really enthused me but the subtle differences between the mean and the median was one of those rare hours.
Let's take a simple, if somewhat contrived, example:
Say you had 10 people.
One earned £10k a year, 8 of them earned £40k a year and one of them earned £20m a year.
The average salary for the population is £2.033m.
The median salary is £40k.
Which figure do you think makes more sense to sum up a typical salary for this group of ten people?
Lies, damn lies and statistics but I hope you'll agree the Tories are being a wee bit sneaky here....
Crisis? What crisis?
24 minutes ago
6 comments:
Can I just say how spooky that is? I had a conversation about mean/median this morning and used exactly the same example. It wasn't even on the same subject!
I would hazard a guess that because this issue involves politicians trading stats most of the public's eyes will glaze over and they won't follow it. The worry for the SNP is that the public may hear the top line i.e. lots of people will be worse off, regardless of the possible reality.
The problem is that in these cases you cannot get one statistic which properly explains this issue to people because the primary one they're interested in is their own. And unless you produce a newspaper for every single person in the country it's hard to do that.
In any case the SNP are largely to blame for this story. In spite of producing a consultation paper on LIT they haven't included the necessary figures/formula which would allow everyone (if they so wish) to calculate the likely exact impact on them, their family and friends.
Until they do that they have left an information vacuum. And we all know what happens then - someone fills it.
That is pretty spooky actually.
It's a great example to explain the difference though.
And you're probably right about the SNP not filling the information gap. But then, why would you if you have very little intention of following through with the policy in the first place ;)
I'd be happy to pay more though (which I would), I'm done with Council Tax.
Jeff £2.033MILLION as a mean for a max of £40k!! Wow no wonder there are black holes in the Nats figures LOL.
I think you'll find the mean is £35k for your example.
Trust me I'm a data analyst.
Did you read the example Stephen? The max of the population is £20m, not £40k.
I can therefore assure you the mean is £2.033m.
And I like to think an MSc in Statistics, an MSc in Genome Analysis and a Chartered Accountancy qualification from ICAS trumps a data analyst position but lets not get snooty about it ;)
Sorry Jeff I always have a problem reading white on black. I must have missed that. Not all that clear to us dsylexics.
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