• xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Erm, you actually can talk about the modal american in the same sense as any of those other measures of central tendency.

    You don’t talk about “the average american” with no context. You talk about the average american salary, the average american number of occupants of a household, and so on. Same for median.

    The modal American salary would be the dollar figure which has the most americans earning that exact amount. It’s fine.

    • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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      5 months ago

      Don’t do continuous data.

      Turn salary into a discrete variable. 0-20k, 20-40k, 40-60k, etc.

      Modal salary, is the category most Americans fall into. And that is genuinely interesting to know.

      • bstix@feddit.dk
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        5 months ago

        The modal American salary would be the dollar figure which has the most americans earning that exact amount. It’s fine.

        Wouldn’t that just be the modal salary?

        I’m not sure I understand why you questioned it, but no.

        He saids it is the American modal salary. The modal salary of all salaries is probably in Chinese Yuan, if that’s what you’re asking.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          US citizens when you say that

          “Wait… People don’t use USD everywhere???”

          (After working at a currency exchange counter outside the USA, I can confirm that it’s not that unusual a reaction from US tourists…)

        • bstix@feddit.dk
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          5 months ago

          I didn’t intend to mock the average American Joe, it’s just that the question doesn’t make sense and I’m curious of what they wanted to know, or if I’m the one missing something.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        It’s normally worded “the average American makes $x a year.” Who is the average American? That should actually be worded “the average American salary is $x.” That’s actually what’s being discussed. Assuming we continue the same trend in language, the OP is correct. You’re also correct, but they’re saying the same thing as you, just with the poor word choice from the other things.

    • HandwovenConsensus@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      The mode of a set of numbers is the number that occurs the most times in the set.

      For example, in [1,4,4,4,5,6,6,7], the mode is 4, because there are more 4s than there are any other number.