Average Intelligence

We were at the doctor's yesterday, and a counselor sat us down to discuss some numbers. Even as I girded myself for the usual array of bewildering physical units, the counselor told us that the array numbers—which all looked surprisingly close to 1—were all in terms of MoMs: multiple of the median. Unitless: perfect.

Most of the numbers looked just right, but one or two were a bit off, so I asked what we should understand by an entry with a MoM value of close to two. Her response: “Oh, that just means its twice the average”. I tried to clarify the distinction, until it became clear that she simply thought “median” meant “average”.

And we paid for this service.