When you were a child, you might have seen a dark brown bottle of a mysterious l

Question

When you were a child, you might have seen a dark brown bottle of a mysterious liquid high on a shelf in your garage, out of your reach. “That’s poison,” a parent might have warned, pointing to the container. “Don’t touch.” It nonetheless had some use. It was there for a reason. This example illustrates a principle: Items that can be misused often have a valid use, and vice versa. An average (e.g. mean, median, and mode) is not an exception; it can be useful, but if it is misused or misinterpreted it can be destructive.

With that in mind the question is: In what way might an average be misused? Alternatively, how might an average be misinterpreted? For instance, how can a misinterpreted average pertain to stereotyping? How can we avoid misuse or misinterpretation of averages? Provide a specific example to illustrate your explanation.

**Please be thorough with your response, this is for a discussion post. At least enough information that I can build upon Thanks!! :)

Explanation / Answer

ANSWER:

Avarage is extremely sensitive to extreme values.

Example : Avarage of 1,2,3,4 is 2.5

but , Avarage of 1,2,3,4,100 is 22.

So avarage is not a good measure of the data sets containing extreme values.

Also , when we are calculated avarage then it is assumed that all values are equally important but in real life its not true. Example, in finance sector all stocks are not have same wieghtage.

Following is example for mis use of avarage.

Example:

Once upon a time a statastian and his students were travelling . They have to cross a small river. The teacher asked his students to measure the depth of river at some points. The students some how to measure the depths, now they calculated the avarage and founds that the avarage depth of the river is smaller than thier hiegts. so they decided to not to take boat and try to cross river by himself. And we all know that the result, when they reached at the largest depth they down.

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