Lay people confuse average with median. When you ask someone if they're "above average" they often assume you mean "in the top half of the population in ability" which is "above median." In which case 80% is impossible.

What you say might be true, but the article is written by "the editor in chief of Knowing Neurons and a PhD candidate in neuroscience at the University of California". It seems that not only lay people confuse statistics terms, but also the very people that make research and present the results. And this is sad ... and in line with the article in some sense.

I just want to be clear... Are you implying that the author doesn't understand the difference between different measures of central tendency?

> Are you implying that the author [a PhD candidate in neuroscience] doesn't understand the difference between different measures of central tendency?

They probably are. There's this tendency in geek circles to assume that someone—especially an expert in another field—doesn't know what they're talking about unless they spell it out in such excruciating detail that those geeks (who actually don't know what they're talking about) can follow along as well.

I don't know why it is, and it's frustrating as hell. It seems like it's related to the Principle of Charity, but I don't know if it's the same thing, or just a similar thing.

Glad to read this. I thought I might be the only one picking up on the irony here. I mean, come on. He JUST read about D-K, then demonstrates it in action.

I agree, although as I said to another commenter, I'm more bothered by assuming others to be incompetent even though they are, than I am by assuming yourself to be competent when you're not. And they're related, but not quite the same?

It's called the Dunning-Krueger effect. I'm not trying to be silly. The geek you describe thinks his ability in this area is better than it is.

Hmm. Maybe? I don't think that's quite it, either—or at least, that aspect of it doesn't bother me as much. If this type of geek thinks that they're really good in some area that they have no knowledge of, that's silly, but what bothers me more is the assumption that the people who are experts don't know anything. They're related, definitely. But I object more to the tearing-other-people-down, rather than the building-themselves-up.

Like the users above who assume that the author, a PhD candidate in neuroscience, is unaware of the difference between mean and median. Did they explicitly mention which they meant? No, of course not—it's clear from the context which was meant, and to explicitly spell it out would be insulting to the readers. Yet we have readers here who take that omission to mean that the author doesn't even understand the difference.

I see it all the time when a person writes about a problem in their field, and then armchair quarterbacks here confidently state their 5 minutes of thought about it as if it were a novel idea. So sure, there's some Dunning-Kruger in there, but there's also a corresponding assumption that author didn't think of the solutions you get from 5 minutes of thought about the problem. "Why didn't they just consider X!" Well duh—of course they did, because that's obvious.

Agreed. I doubt anyone understands that to mean anything but median.

It probably wasn't quantitative but qualitative, and of few choices, "rate your driving skills as one of the following: above average, below average, or average". In which case, yes, a statistical impossibility. But agreed, they're missing key context.