Math is cool. Has real world day-to-day application. What might that be you ask? Well, sussing out BS in mainstream media. Case in point: in a recent Maureen Downey opinion piece on math scores, to underscore the importance of STEM, we get this:
"Engineers earned the highest median salaries, with an average pay of $97,000..."
You need to know almost nothing about statistics to smell this road apple. You see, when they change horses in mid stream, from median to average, they're mangling the data to support their viewpoint. You should stop reading the opinion piece at this point and disregard all you've read to this point. Instead you might want to rabbit-hole on the "flaws of the averages" because almost without fail when someone slings around average numbers they're slinging crap. Thought exercise: consider the average household income with two earners in the USA. Doesn't really tell you very much does it?
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