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A comment on CDC Confirms a THC Additive, Vitamin E Acetate, Is Culprit in Most Vaping Deaths. Parent comment

Re:CDC Confirms a THC Additive, Vitamin E Acetate, Is Culpri... by rahimnathwani on Saturday December 21, 2019 @12:38AM (#21849830)
Because these are summary statistics drawn from a non-uniform distribution.

If one in 10 people is over 70 and some others get serious or chronic illnesses earlier in life, the mean cost per person could easily be much higher than the median cost per person.

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Re:CDC Confirms a THC Additive, Vitamin E Acetate, Is Culpri... by anfilt on Saturday December 21, 2019 @12:53AM (#21849870)
I suppose, but why not report the median instead.
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Re:CDC Confirms a THC Additive, Vitamin E Acetate, Is Culpri... by rahimnathwani on Saturday December 21, 2019 @01:07AM (#21849897)
Because it’s much more difficult.

The mean can be calculated from the total: just divide by the population. That’s what the commenter to whom you replied did. The total was probably easy to estimate, as the largest healthcare providers’ revenues are in their public filings.

Calculating the median requires individual data. That is much harder to get because, in many cases, no one except the patient has the data.

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Re:CDC Confirms a THC Additive, Vitamin E Acetate, Is Culpri... by mlyle on Saturday December 21, 2019 @01:08AM (#21849899)
Because medians don't let you extrapolate total costs or how population-wide changes will affect total costs. The tails of the distribution matter when we're talking about public health.
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