answered prayer, bell curves, ice cream, and commodes

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At 11:07 AM 7/22/97 -0500, Robert J. Brown wrote:
>    Tyler wrote:
>    > 7.  Half of the people in the world are below average.
>
>    This is true only if the sample forms a perfectly symmetric curve.

<snip>

> The computation of the first moment, or
>mean (colloquialloy called the "average"), is no longer just the sum
>of the samples divided by the number of samples.  Consult a good
>college statistics text for the details...

I remember the title of a math book we had in MAT 118 (DESCRIPTIVE 
STATISTICS) at Parkland College was titled:

                   "How to lie with statistics"

It went into how you can use just about any statistics available (almost)
and then make any case-in-point based on those statistics by choosing the
proper way to show the stats and calculate one of several different kinds
of averages (mean, median, etc.).

Bro "don't remember too much about that class" Tyler