Underwhelmed
I’m not thrilled with wordpress, so I’m going back to blogspot for now.
Find me here:
www.laundrywarrior.blogspot.com
Measures of Central Tendency
For the first time in my life, I’m taking a math class that I really like. It’s Math 139: Contemporary Topics in Mathematics. Contrary to my inital assumption, we do not sit in a circle discussing new mathematical breakthroughs. It’s actually just like any other math class, except it includes relevant applications to its lessons.
Today’s lesson was in Statistics, and it dealt with a term that intrigued me: Measures of Central Tendency. I’m no mathie, but I thought the term was enticing. It actually refers to finding the mean, median, and mode of a set of data. I remember mean, median, and mode from early math classes, maybe in elementary or middle school. To recap: mean is just the average of the numbers, median is the number in the middle of the set, and mode is the number that occurs most frequently. I remember thinking as a kid, Who cares about median and mode?!? The mean is the only important number, anyway. And, in most cases, it really is.
Today I learned a different perspective. Say, for example, a class scored a bunch of different grades on an exam, mostly in the 70’s and 80’s. What if one student scored a 22? If the class was small in size, that stupid 22 would throw off the class’ average score, therefore largely misrepresenting the data. A better way to represent the class’ performance would be to find the median, which would likely be in the mid-70’s.
That phenomenon got me thinking about what interested me in the term Measures of Central Tendency, and how it applies to life.
In math, the median is useful because it is resistant to extremities in data: for example, that stupid 22 doesn’t really matter if you look at the median grade. Therefore, calculating the mean is sometimes a waste of time, when you could just find the median. Finding the median is always easy because you just look at the data’s center, and pick the number in the middle. And life should always be that easy.
If we applied mathematical reasoning to our lives, we might find that sometimes analyzing and calulating is unnecessary because the middle is oftentimes more telling. All too often, we think about our lives in terms of extremities: the breakups, the deaths, the mistakes, the births, the big wins, etc. If we focus on what happens in the middle of these events, the small daily stuff, we’ll find where life is lived. That is the data which should be measured because it tells us about our central tendencies. Look to the middle to find the answers. Make sure the small days in your lives are well-lived and well-remembered.
Leaving the Labryinth
Have you read John Green’s Looking for Alaska yet? If not, read it, and don’t look at this post until you’ve finished because it contains teasers. Just a warning.
I have an assignment for my Adolescent Lit class that focuses on the unresolved answers surrounding Alaska’s death. We have been asked to determine the cause of her death, and I am certain I have the answer.
I used to be a lot like Alaska Young, which makes me a self-proclaimed expert on her death, her labryinth, etc.
I’d expand on that, but we don’t know each other very well yet.
(See? I’m enigmatic, just like Alaska.)
Awkward Welcome
Greetings, nerd. Face it, if you’re here, I’m probably right.
This is my first post. I’m actually writing it only to see what my words look like on the blog.
I promise things will eventually become interesting.
Art Credit: Edgar Degas
Laundry Warrior 