We Are All Above Averages

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Of all the mathematical concepts humanity has invented to help deal with reality — such as zero, infinity, numbers, etc. — surely the least useful and most toxic is the notion of “average.” Like empty calories — food that has no nutrition — the idea of an average something is without any real utility. In a heartbeat I can look up the average high temperature for today and it will not tell me what the actual high temperature will be, five or ten degrees above or below the average. So what use is it to know the average?  

Meteorology uses a lot of averages. They rate the likelihood of storms of a certain size and destructiveness by labeling them, for example, storms that on average will occur once in 100 years, or once in 1,000 years. So far this year, the American Midwest has experienced four “once in 1,000 year” storms. In 2018, a single location, Ellicott City, Maryland, experienced two thousand-year storms in two years. Knowing the average chance of a serious storm where you live is content-free information.

I had a friend once who was an economist. He used to introduce himself by saying, “I’m an economist. Which means that if you forget your telephone number, I will estimate it for you.” Averages are precisely that useful.

 Averages mislead in more dangerous ways. Right now, they are contributing to a dangerous misapprehension about this year’s “off-year” (meaning not  a presidential election year) Congressional elections. Someone took an average of the results of decades of off-year elections, that is, the number of seats won and lost by the two parties, and concluded that, on average, the party that holds the White House will lose a substantial number of seats in any off-year election. 

Look more closely at history and you will find that only a few recent midterm elections resulted in setbacks for the party holding the White House, but they were large setbacks. Many midterm elections see little or no change. But when you roll all the numbers together and average them, it looks like doomsday for the party in power. One statistician said this is as meaningful as putting Bill Gates in a room with four homeless personas and declaring that the average net worth of the people in that room is $20 billion.

An even more toxic use of averages is made by politicians who stand up in front of audiences and assure them that the economy is in wonderful shape; jobs are being “created” at a furious pace, unemployment is at historic lows, corporate profits are higher than ever, the stock market is percolating. All is well, they insist, on average.

The problem is that almost every individual I know has had one lousy job since Methusaleh was in diapers, has not had a raise in a coon’s age, could not begin to afford investing in the stock market, and is watching fearfully as the price of basic necessities skyrockets. When someone like that hears a politician or an economist insist that everything is fine, they doubt that speaker’s sanity and honesty. And they go looking for a political leader as angry and as pessimistic as they are. That never turns out well.

It’s the equivalent of being told that if you are standing with one foot immersed in ice water and the other in boiling water, on average you are perfectly comfortable. Mathematically defensible, perhaps, but those calories are completely empty.