Its median family income is more than $98,000 a year. Half of the county’s households make even more.
Uh, yes. That is what a median means:
The middle number in a given sequence of numbers, taken as the average of the two middle numbers when the sequence has an even number of numbers: 4 is the median of 1, 3, 4, 8, 9.
Even my seventh grader recognized that by definition half of the county’s households have an income above the median. The other half are below. And not everyone with an income below the median is frequenting the food pantry.
What the writer was really trying to express is the range of incomes in Loudoun County. The curve has a long tail that reaches to very low incomes. Maybe the mode of the income distribution would have been a better statistic to consider. Or maybe we will just forget the statistics all together and pack up a couple of bags full of groceries to give to the food pantry. Unlike calculus, Christian charity knows no limits.
3 comments:
Journalist don't require much math to actually get a degree. They don't usually require much English either.
I live in New Jersey, which is the richest state in the Union. We also have some very poor cities here. Suffice it to say, our food banks are always in need.
NJ is the richest state, but has some of the poorest cities
As a jounrnalism major, no, we weren't required to take much math (our paychecks are too small to require that), shockingly little english (that's what editors are for), and damn too little history(only making the deadline of the day matters. Yesterday's news is, well, yesterday's news) But hey, a newspaper only costs about 50 cents and the network news is free. You get what you pay for.
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