When U.S. Air Force discovered the flaw of averages (2016)

Related story discussed a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957255 (165 comments)

Discussions on this link from years past:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22956832 (113 comments)

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230287 (106 comments)

I like to reference this article as an example of not only plane cockpit accessibility, but also software accessibility. Unfortunately far too many user interfaces are designed for "the average" which doesn't exist, be it terms of font size, contrast ratios or even information density, often with no proper configuration options.

This was a great read. I kept expecting it to reference the "Curse of Dimensionality" [1] as an explanation for why we see no close-to-average samples in high-dimensional spaces. I'm guessing the book this is an excerpt from might. In any case, I enjoyed this as a relatable instance of the concept!

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_dimensionality