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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

I don’t covet the role. I just feel I’d be marginally better than others that suck at it.

There was a study about some skill, and like 80% of people thought they are better than average.

If a relatively small number suck HUGELY at a skill then 80% may be better than average. (50% will be better than median.)

I'm no native English speaker but at least in my experience average is used to mean any "central tendency", and not the mean in particular.

We probably should just avoid saying "average" and use "mean", "mode", "median", or whatever we actually mean instead.

As a native speaker average is almost exclusively used to for mean and people specify median or mode when that’s what they are talking about. The same way people say mean without specifying arithmetic, geometric, or harmonic mean then it’s the arithmetic mean.

It’s only when someone says something like the average family rather than saying the average income when things get ambiguous. Typical on the other hand is closer to mean because it’s tossing out outliers.

I generally think of “typical” as being the median rather than the mean.

Ops yep, I meant median.

I have to agree. Level of suck at management is also unrelated to any one quantified linear scale so the mean is the result of a particularly arbitrary personal (or national like GPA with range bias vs 0-20 with other bias) definition of a corresponding numerical ratings so median and mode have fewer degrees of freedom for arbitrary results.

It is also pretty absurd to assume without explanation that a minority who are especially bad at management have even their minority presence in management given that if sucking matters it should correlate with some type of failure that eventually correlates to drop out.

People often repeat this (also in different contexts, e.g. driving skills) as a "proof" that most people don't know math.

In fact, it's the other way around - a proof that the person suggesting this doesn't know math.

If 80% are skilled at 1 and 20% are skilled at -100, then most are better than average.

Or: Imagine a room of people. Bill Gates walks into that room. Most people are now below-average wealthy.

Median it is then.

Ok, say that that is true. I’m much happier subjecting myself to my own suckage than someone elses, so that’s a good motivation too :)

I know that feeling, I learned the hard way so that having better ideas, and seeing stuff you propose after 2 years kind a proofs that, is different from actually acting upon these ideas when you are in a position of power.

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