What it also shows is something that confuses a lot of people. Look at the solid blue line – the average life expectancy.
Is the life expectancy of most people better than average (not necessarily a Lake Wobegon effect), average, or worse than average?
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5651a7.htm
The solid line is the average life expectancy. Most of the lines are below that average.
Let me create a different chart to show the same idea. With financial information, since people seem to be much more concerned with their relative wealth than with most other comparisons. Assume that the numbers 1 to 5 on the chart below are different people. The other numbers (50 and 100) represent the annual income in thousands of dollars of these people – that is 50 = $50,000. We have 5 people with a total of $300,000 annual income. 300/5 = 60 (or $300,000/5 = $60,000). The red horizontal line at 60 in the middle of the chart is at the average (mean average) for these 5 people. These incomes are not unusually high, or low.
Why do so many of us believe that most people in a group cannot be above/below average?
It is not unusual to hear the word impossible used when someone presents data that show that most people can be below/above average.
Is this impossible?
Is this even uncommon?
.
You can’t forget that all the women are strong and all the men are good looking too!