How can most of any quantity be less than average?

Edit: ah, I think I was thrown off by the use of “median/average” as equivalents.

The median is the midpoint where 50% of people are above/below the threshold. If there are outliers, and perhaps we can agree there are outliers on the smart/dumb scale, it can skew the average above or below the median.

And I guess being extremely dumb carries a larger risk of death than being extremely smart, so if people start out symmetrically distributed along this scale, the distribution will skew right over time.

Thanks to a few billionaires in a small town, the majority of people living there have a below average income.

It is true in every right skewed distribution. Furthermore almost every distribution is skewed.

The median and average are equivalent in a normal distribution.

But then would you still be able to say “most” are below average of the distribution is normal?

If we assume intelligence is a normal distribution, then we can say half of the population is below average. I think it's fair to categorize half as most.

“Half = most” is… innovative. I like to think of it as “half = so many that you’ll run into a lot of them.”

By "most" definitions, "most" means more than half. So we're literally arguing over a single person.

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