Comment by ngc248

4 years ago

"If bill gates gets on a bus, on an average everyone in the bus is a billionaire". Read this somewhere and this made me understand why just the average on its own does not say anything.

I would agree that on average each bus rider has a billion dollars, but I can't find away to justify that each person is a billionaire on average. Maybe it is because money is continuous whereas billionaire status is binary, so averaging it out doesn't really make sense.

  • Then the opposite would be true (and equally nonsensical). If billionaire is a binary status, then Gates, Musk, and Bezos could get on a bus, and on average there are no billionaires on the bus.