(Warning: Quirky material ahead =>)
Seeing this CBS News about Maine legalizing switchblades for one-armed people reminded me of a riddle about limbs that’s posed by some statisticians for educational purposes. Here it is: “The great majority of people in [fill in your country here] have more than the average number of [choose either arms or legs here].”
For an answer {UK, legs}, see this posting on averages by Kevin McConway, Professor of Applied Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at The Open University. I heard this riddle also from Hans Rosling in his BBC TV program on “The Joy of Statistics.”* He spoke of his home country of Sweden, whose inhabitants on average have 1.999 legs.
I’m quitting while I’m ahead. Oops, this makes me wonder if I have an average number of heads – a scary thought, my hunch being that I’m below average for this. I never imagined that averages could be so creepy!
*See this StatsMadeEasy blog on Rosling
#1 by ellisonmm on April 28, 2011 - 1:46 pm
This reminds me of an episode of the Andy Griffith show where Andy is chastising Opie for not being charitable. He claims there are one and a half needy boys per square mile in the county. Opie claims that he’s never seen half a boy. Andy replies it’s not a boy, it’s a ratio to which Opie says’ “Poor Horatio.”
Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eI689Qxaao for the clip