Comments on: Obama stretches “average family income”

By: Eugene Sisneroz

Eugene Sisneroz — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:06:15 +0000

I am very thankful to this topic because it really gives useful information ..;

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:37:31 +0000

It’s also possible that Obama was taking inflation into consideration. Inflation has risen considerably in the past 7 or 8 years so even if there were an increase, with inflation taken into consideration he could be more accurate.

Generally you would expect incomes to increase with inflation in a good economy. If income does not increase with inflation then there is a problem. It may be easier to just say “average income has gone down” than to explain the math to a group of people that may not necessarily be good with numbers or even care.

By: JayT

JayT — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:19:42 +0000

It seems to me that the the average/median point is irrelevant seeing as though the $2,000 number was a lie either way you cut it.

By: matt

matt — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:39:10 +0000

Median and average are certainly two different things, but as far as “lies” go this is pretty mild. Considering the anti-intellectual climate in politics these days, you can imagine why Obama might want to avoid fancy-pants words like “median” in front of certain audiences.

By: nathan.clark

nathan.clark — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:46:03 +0000

We’re still looking into this Brett. Help is both invited and welcome.

By: Brett A

Brett A — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:57:02 +0000

I still don’t understand how this doesn’t count as a lie.

By: nathan.clark

nathan.clark — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:09:04 +0000

You raise a good point. If you’ll check the income spread in the US, you’ll notice that the distribution is uneven, like you mention above. Another example that helps explain why various methods of averages are cited: In a town of 100 women, if 99 women are virgins and the last woman has had sex 100 times, the mean would compel you to state that the average woman in that town had sex once. I’m sure those 99 virgins would be upset at that misrepresentative methodology. However, the median and mode forms of average would both result in the more accurate statement: that the average woman was a virgin.
There is a reason that there are multiple methods of tabulating average. If there’s a comprehensive reason why median is misleading, let us know.

By: MLP

MLP — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:17:06 +0000

Seems like a stretch to not call this a lie ..

From Wikipedia, “The median is primarily used for skewed distributions, which it represents differently than the arithmetic mean. Consider the multiset { 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 9 }. The median is 2 in this case, as is the mode, and it might be seen as a better indication of central tendency than the arithmetic mean of 3.166….”