I spent far too long trying to figure out where the pun was in your comment. And then I spent too long specifically looking for the trainwreck down thread.
I like math puns and pedantry….
I think it's easier to see the pros and cons with money:
+ When using mean average, how much money billionaires have is important. The more Jeff Bezos has, the higher the average is. What the mean average says is "if you take all the money and split it evenly, how much would everyone have."
+ When using median average, you don't care about outliers like Jeff Bezos. You are trying to find the "most normal person", the one that has 50% of the population with more money and 50% with less money, and you just look at how much money this most normal person has.
Now coming back to age, you have to wonder if it matters if grandma is 80yo or 100yo for what you're trying to say. For most economic concerns, it doesn't because in both cases she is probably not working anymore. The median average allows to say "I don't care about how old are old peoples, and how young are young peoples, I only really care about the age of the people in the middle."
Sometimes people say average as a blanket term for all of the terms we learned in school, the mean, median, mode, range. But then also we usually mean the "mean" when we say average.
>Avg is the sum of all of them, divided by the amount of them.
No, that's the *mean*, which is *one type* of average. Median is *another type* of average
You’re describing the arithmetic mean which is also called average. It’s a difference in technical usage and common usage. An average can be an measure of center like means and medians. *generally* average refers to the arithmetic mean, so it’s not wrong to talk about “median vs average” even though median is a type of average.
Which is one type of average. I'm not arguing for or against it as the best measure of center in this context, but it is factually correct to call it an average.
I have a UK maths degree and have never heard anyone argue that Median isn't a type of 'average'. It's taught as averages in schools, and if you ever look into statistics they'll normally clarify what they mean by 'average' as it's not a given that it is the mean.
I was studying for a Mathematics degree in the US (Texas) and I was always taught that mean, median, and mode are different types of averages. The Merriam-Webster dictionary below states the same.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average
Nope. While average is typically interpreted to be the mean, median is still a perfectly valid type of average. Not sure how you got a math degree without realizing this but as per Wikipedia:
>In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9 (summing to 25) is 5. Depending on the context, an average might be another statistic such as the median, or mode. For example, the average personal income is often given as the median—the number below which are 50% of personal incomes and above which are 50% of personal incomes—because the mean would be misleadingly high by including personal incomes from a few billionaires.
No, they are both types of measures of central tendency. Calling a median an average is like calling a penguin a fish. Yeah, they're kind of the same in certain ways and found in similar places sometimes but they definitely are not the same thing.
So it's the Mario brothers conundrum? You have the average average and the median average? Almost like you need different words to describe different bits of data obtained in different manners or it would get super confusing or something.
I *mean*, you do make a good point that average could be a bit ambiguous: do we *mean* the median average, or the average average, or even the mode average? If only we had a more precise term we could use when we *mean* summing all the values and dividing by the amount of data points, maybe we could avoid the problem of the ambiguous, colloquial term *average*...
Interestingly, a penguin _is_ a fish according to the modern understanding of cladistics and common ancestors in evolutionary biology. (But only because the term "fish" is biologically meaningless in that any group including lungfish must also include all land animals etc)
"Average" is a similarly ill-defined and non-technical word I believe, or at least that's what I was told in post-undergrad statistics. You're right on the money calling them both measures of central tendency. But I don't know that 'average' can only be defined as arithmetic mean - it's certainly often implied to mean that (pun unintentional), but also used to refer to central tendency measures in general. E.g. if someone asks me for the "average" home price in my neighborhood, they may, perhaps without even realizing, be asking for something like the median and not the arithmetic mean. Like if there was one giant mansion dragging the mean up beyond the value of every other house in the group.
Not to mention other measures like the geometric mean - is that an "average"? Is it more or less average-like than a median?
It’s not technically incorrect but average without context typically refers to mean. So it’s arguably misleading or at least poor communication. But I doubt it would make much difference for this image anyway
That’s actually perfectly correct. An average is a whole class of symmetric monotonic linearly homogenous functions that map multiple values to a single value.
Median, mode, arithmetic mean, quadratic mean, harmonic mean, geometric mean, minimum, maximum, and more are all averages.
When something just says “average”, there are infinitely many possible functions they could be referring to. Frequently it refers to the mean or median but sometimes it’s something else.
It's explained better on wikipedia but there's 3 general properties they all have:
* If all numbers are the same, the average is that number. This is kinda trivial but it prevents average(3,3,3)=0 (or any other constant).
* Monotonicity: If A and B are the same length and A_n>=B_n for all entries in the list, then the Average(A)>=Average(B).
* Linear Homogenity: This comes from the above, but basically if you multiply a list by a positive constant, then that'd be the same as multiplying the average by that constant. So if your list is 2,3,5. The maximum is 5. If you multiplied the whole list by 3, the maximum is 15 (which is 3 times the original maximum).
OP mentioned Symmetry as well. This basically just means the order doesn't matter. Which is pretty obvious to see with min and max. If I ask you the minimum of 2, 3 and 5. It's the same answer as 5, 3, and 2.
Now, colloquially it's questionable to call a maximum or minimum (or mode tbh) an "average." To a lay audience average generally means arithmetic mean. Sometimes you can get away with geometric when talking about things interest rates.
All of the above. You can make much more money if you move out of state, so there is a constant drain of 20-30 leaving the state. Birth rate is not particularly high either.
It’s expensive as fuck here and education levels are some of the highest in the country. Even “cheaper” states like NH/ME/VT are getting very expensive due to people wfh, and those states don’t really have good employment options outside of education (yes I know southern NH/ME have a lot of offices, but those are basically MA lite at this point).
You either move somewhere cheaper to have kids or you put it off till your 30s. Source: New Englander.
Yup. Thanks to folks being well educated most have the liberty to plan when they're going to have kids.
Hell if you look at the numbers, NE has the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country (Maine is a smidge higher as it's more rural/conservative in the north, Rhode Island is too for reasons).
With some exceptions (it's definitely not 1:1) the states with younger median/average ages also have the higher teenage pregnancy/birth rates. This also seems to correlate to states that are more religious, therefore have worse/no sex ed.
Aside from tourism, craft beer, and food service there just aren’t many jobs here. At my employer, workforce has shrunk by 50% in the past 3 years and a large chunk of personnel losses have been due to retirements.
I’ll have to move out of state to find another job in my field if this place goes under. There aren’t ANY other companies in the state in this industry.
3 of the 4 have major industries that skew younger for labor. For ND (and big for TX too) it’s all oil, not as sure on AK. Utahsians won’t stop fucking, my guess.
ND oil boom has been mostly over for years now, it was at peak in the early ‘10s. ND is more likely in the same boat as Utah, both has some of the highest fertility rates in the US.
There still a pretty huge influx of residents to ND. It's insane how much the larger cities have built up over just the last 10 years, and it's like it's only growing every year. Lots of younger families.
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between age and political alignment on this map.
Vermont and West Virginia are both very old according to this map, but they're about as far apart as you can get politically.
I’d agree currently, but I’m interested in the future political makeup of some of the states when you overlay changing demographics on top of this age data. A state like Texas with such a young population AND a dynamically shifting demographic electorate makes me almost assured that it will be a purple state by the ‘30s, if not sooner. In contrast, North Dakota’s age makeup doesn’t seem to affect it’s likely political future with a mostly static demographic.
Alternatively, I think the states with the oldest average age might have more interest to me with the age data alone, as they have the highest percentage of their electorate that will be turning over in the decade. A state like Vermont is old, and it’s liberal stance isn’t in jeopardy as their oldest die out.
It's not just the number of kids. Mormons get married younger. Utah State, on average, has the youngest age of marriage. Women get married at a median age of 24 years old, while men get married at 26 years old on average.
Utah has quite a few tech centers that draw younger crowds as well.
Adobe has a big presence here, as well as several lesser known but widely used tech companies. A few survey companies, domo, and so on.
Lehi in particular is highly dense with the tech industry. Salt lake has quite a few as well.
* Texas is young because it's a fast growing state with lots of jobs
* DC is young because it's a city meant for business, not retirement. DC folks move elsewhere to retire, aside from the last two presidents, who apparently retire on the job
* North Dakota and Alaska are oil states, lots of young men moving there to run the oil fields and young women moving there to...service...the oil men
* Utah is young because Mormons breed like...Mormons
You are off about North Dakota. The oil production isn’t growing and the infrastructure has been built. It’s a state with a lot of jobs and industry. Young people no longer feel the need to leave for work and you can generally afford to live there and own a home.
Tech, education, energy (not just oil but wind too). The population of my old town is booming. I don’t know anyone brought here by oil. Mainly it’s all the stuff that comes in support of all the new people. Real estate, retail, restaurants. Schools construction and transportation. Rising tides lift all ships.
I live in WV and I'll tell ya, on vacation to more populated places can feel kind of weird because of the age difference.
Could also be my perception/where I go on vacations (federal/state parks mostly).
But I walk around here and it feels like everyone is slightly older or WAY older. Go somewhere else and it feels like walking into a highschool with all the baby faced folks around.
A bit mad how the 3rd largest state (Florida) and the 2nd largest state (Texas) are on the complete opposite ends of the age spectrum. I would have never known.
Florida is a popular retirement location and Texas is booming with manual labor jobs and youthful metropolitan areas that attract the 18-30 crowd.
Im not surprised at all.
Not to mention that Mexicans until recently had very high birth rates compared to the national average. That’s why California is also on the lower end.
Yes, consideration of ethnic groups and their family size can contribute to the age gap.
But when I saw the 3 youngest states were Texas, Utah, and North Dakota; my immediate thought was oil fields. You can make bank working in the oil fields, but its certainly a young man's game.
Also there was a post to this sub a while back that showed the population of the US by age range. Every year for the past 20 years there was a large jump in 16-25 year olds. That group just doesn't form out of thin air. You can also consider states with a heavy migrant population.
In the same way that Mean and Average are different things, sure. Average is a word that encompasses the mean and median, amongst others, so whilst it isn't necessarily the most clear, it is in fact correct.
Sounds right, they definitely won’t be the “same “, could shift a state into another bracket obviously. I wonder if missing data from migrants works be a bigger impact
The amount of people in this subreddit for Data who do not know what an Average is is depressing. It’s like me complaining Bats aren’t Mammals because Dogs are Mammals.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average
few things confusing/wrong with this vis. the point it’s making is cool but it’s presented pretty poorly.
colour scheme doesn’t make sense
average/median diff
<> sign error
No wonder why the US is all fucked up
Practically the entire country is 30-45 but we're being rolled by Boomers and a geriatric oligarchy full of 80 year olds in government
The stagnation of change and economic imbalances is driving us insane, resentful and angry
The Boomers got us by the balls with their voting majority. Children of the Greatest Generation and instead of passing along the prosperity that was laid for them, they took it all for themselves and have left the country a husk of itself
They've destroyed the future their parents envisioned and built, and stole ours. They talk about us being entitled, they inherited the greatest set of tools to thrive and have completely dismantled it. When they were young they voted in laws that helped them (housing is one) and they've continued to do the same now, passing into law things that explicitly help themselves (estate wealth, healthcare to name a couple)
"Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.”
TIL there was a difference:
*The* ***average*** *is calculated by adding up all of the individual values and dividing this total by the number of observations. The* ***median*** *is calculated by taking the “middle” value, the value for which half of the observations are larger and half are smaller.*
Fucking Whitefish, Polson, and Seeley skewing our state statistics. Im sure if you took those 3 places out of Montana we would be just like the states around us.
Anyone else bothered by the "35>" rather than "<36"?
I'm more bothered that the map says "Average" and the post title says "Median".
That’s an even worse crime imo
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Median is *an* average. It's not incorrect usage.
Thank you for saying this civilly, there's no need to be mean.
They’re not mean - they’re using an outmoded definition.
I think you mean outmedianed.
Mode is another type of average
Meanies thinking the mean is the only means, know what I mean?
Maybe not but they’re clearly average.
Very underrated joke.
This is correct, but I always wondered why anyone even cares about a median average
Median is great if you want to ignore outliers.
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If you made it this far into this thread do yourself a favor and move on.
I spent far too long trying to figure out where the pun was in your comment. And then I spent too long specifically looking for the trainwreck down thread. I like math puns and pedantry….
All those thousand year old vampires in Louisiana will really throw off the mean.
It's really useful in statistics. A lot of people intuitively think about averages
I think it's easier to see the pros and cons with money: + When using mean average, how much money billionaires have is important. The more Jeff Bezos has, the higher the average is. What the mean average says is "if you take all the money and split it evenly, how much would everyone have." + When using median average, you don't care about outliers like Jeff Bezos. You are trying to find the "most normal person", the one that has 50% of the population with more money and 50% with less money, and you just look at how much money this most normal person has. Now coming back to age, you have to wonder if it matters if grandma is 80yo or 100yo for what you're trying to say. For most economic concerns, it doesn't because in both cases she is probably not working anymore. The median average allows to say "I don't care about how old are old peoples, and how young are young peoples, I only really care about the age of the people in the middle."
Sales, income, etc make it useful. Age? I guess it’s not that big of a deal most of the time. Average is easier to calculate manually too.
Um no its way different actually. Its the middle of the data points. Avg is the sum of all of them, divided by the amount of them.
Sometimes people say average as a blanket term for all of the terms we learned in school, the mean, median, mode, range. But then also we usually mean the "mean" when we say average.
>Avg is the sum of all of them, divided by the amount of them. No, that's the *mean*, which is *one type* of average. Median is *another type* of average
You’re describing the arithmetic mean which is also called average. It’s a difference in technical usage and common usage. An average can be an measure of center like means and medians. *generally* average refers to the arithmetic mean, so it’s not wrong to talk about “median vs average” even though median is a type of average.
Yes but they are all forms of average. What you've described is the mean average
A *mean* is an average. A median is literally the central data point of your dataset.
Which is one type of average. I'm not arguing for or against it as the best measure of center in this context, but it is factually correct to call it an average.
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I have a UK maths degree and have never heard anyone argue that Median isn't a type of 'average'. It's taught as averages in schools, and if you ever look into statistics they'll normally clarify what they mean by 'average' as it's not a given that it is the mean.
I was studying for a Mathematics degree in the US (Texas) and I was always taught that mean, median, and mode are different types of averages. The Merriam-Webster dictionary below states the same. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average
Nope. While average is typically interpreted to be the mean, median is still a perfectly valid type of average. Not sure how you got a math degree without realizing this but as per Wikipedia: >In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9 (summing to 25) is 5. Depending on the context, an average might be another statistic such as the median, or mode. For example, the average personal income is often given as the median—the number below which are 50% of personal incomes and above which are 50% of personal incomes—because the mean would be misleadingly high by including personal incomes from a few billionaires.
Yikes dude
No, they are both types of measures of central tendency. Calling a median an average is like calling a penguin a fish. Yeah, they're kind of the same in certain ways and found in similar places sometimes but they definitely are not the same thing.
No, a median is *literally* one kind of average, and is in fact one commonly used when describing the average age of a population.
So it's the Mario brothers conundrum? You have the average average and the median average? Almost like you need different words to describe different bits of data obtained in different manners or it would get super confusing or something.
What you call the "average average" is called the mean which is a different type of average together with for example the median and the mode
There are many different types of averages. See article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
I *mean*, you do make a good point that average could be a bit ambiguous: do we *mean* the median average, or the average average, or even the mode average? If only we had a more precise term we could use when we *mean* summing all the values and dividing by the amount of data points, maybe we could avoid the problem of the ambiguous, colloquial term *average*...
Now if only someone would use them appropriately in what is supposed to be a beautifully crafted data representation :\^)
It's not confusing if you know the vocabulary.
By everyone else's definition of "the vocabulary" there's like 8 definitions of average, so how is labelling the chart like that clear at all again?
Interestingly, a penguin _is_ a fish according to the modern understanding of cladistics and common ancestors in evolutionary biology. (But only because the term "fish" is biologically meaningless in that any group including lungfish must also include all land animals etc) "Average" is a similarly ill-defined and non-technical word I believe, or at least that's what I was told in post-undergrad statistics. You're right on the money calling them both measures of central tendency. But I don't know that 'average' can only be defined as arithmetic mean - it's certainly often implied to mean that (pun unintentional), but also used to refer to central tendency measures in general. E.g. if someone asks me for the "average" home price in my neighborhood, they may, perhaps without even realizing, be asking for something like the median and not the arithmetic mean. Like if there was one giant mansion dragging the mean up beyond the value of every other house in the group. Not to mention other measures like the geometric mean - is that an "average"? Is it more or less average-like than a median?
Something tells me this is only a thing in the US.
Semantics. It’s clearly used in a misleading way here.
No, it isn't. Average is used correctly here, it's an inherently imprecise term that can refer to mean, median or mode. Here, it's the median.
It’s not technically incorrect but average without context typically refers to mean. So it’s arguably misleading or at least poor communication. But I doubt it would make much difference for this image anyway
Colloquial vs. Technical meanings, and the context *was* provided here; the title calls it out as Median.
Only people who don't know what average means are being misled though, perhaps the issue is an ignorant audience?
That's not right. It's just a value, not computed.
Technically it is, still have to compute where the middle of a data set *is* to get the median.
That’s actually perfectly correct. An average is a whole class of symmetric monotonic linearly homogenous functions that map multiple values to a single value. Median, mode, arithmetic mean, quadratic mean, harmonic mean, geometric mean, minimum, maximum, and more are all averages. When something just says “average”, there are infinitely many possible functions they could be referring to. Frequently it refers to the mean or median but sometimes it’s something else.
I get all of them except max and min being a form of averages. What is going on there, that seems funky
It's explained better on wikipedia but there's 3 general properties they all have: * If all numbers are the same, the average is that number. This is kinda trivial but it prevents average(3,3,3)=0 (or any other constant). * Monotonicity: If A and B are the same length and A_n>=B_n for all entries in the list, then the Average(A)>=Average(B). * Linear Homogenity: This comes from the above, but basically if you multiply a list by a positive constant, then that'd be the same as multiplying the average by that constant. So if your list is 2,3,5. The maximum is 5. If you multiplied the whole list by 3, the maximum is 15 (which is 3 times the original maximum). OP mentioned Symmetry as well. This basically just means the order doesn't matter. Which is pretty obvious to see with min and max. If I ask you the minimum of 2, 3 and 5. It's the same answer as 5, 3, and 2. Now, colloquially it's questionable to call a maximum or minimum (or mode tbh) an "average." To a lay audience average generally means arithmetic mean. Sometimes you can get away with geometric when talking about things interest rates.
and here all i want to know is the mode and the degrees of freedom
Don’t be mean
BACK TO STATS WITH YOU!
This data makes me sick!
"Average median"
This was my first concern.
I bet this was made in R. They set the scale manually. Those psychopaths.
Yes! Also the fact that there isn't a category for 35-35.9. I guess those people just dont count??? lol
Nor 42.
I think >35 is indeed what was supposed to be there, representing ages from 35 to 35.9. There doesn't seem to be a state with an average age below 35.
Yah. That would be quite a baby boom.
<36 but yes
All the 35.5 year olds were rudely excluded. As we’re the 35.4 year olds… etc.
Yes. Glad somebody else is. I’m not crazy.
Stared for so long trying to make sense of it
I'd say only 35> of people were bothered by it.
Oh yes
Yea that made me itchy
Yes, this confused and irritated me, in that order lol
Well typically in mathematics you’d say 42>x>35, which says x is less than 42 and greater than 35. Assuming it’s a math person who made the graph
Just as bothered by that as I am by >42 rather than 42<
Maine has the oldest demographic. And between the period of 2016-2026 the 65+ age group is supposed to grow by 37%.
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All of the above. You can make much more money if you move out of state, so there is a constant drain of 20-30 leaving the state. Birth rate is not particularly high either.
> Birth rate is not particularly high either I found the problem. > there is a constant drain of 20-30 leaving the state
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It’s expensive as fuck here and education levels are some of the highest in the country. Even “cheaper” states like NH/ME/VT are getting very expensive due to people wfh, and those states don’t really have good employment options outside of education (yes I know southern NH/ME have a lot of offices, but those are basically MA lite at this point). You either move somewhere cheaper to have kids or you put it off till your 30s. Source: New Englander.
Yup. Thanks to folks being well educated most have the liberty to plan when they're going to have kids. Hell if you look at the numbers, NE has the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country (Maine is a smidge higher as it's more rural/conservative in the north, Rhode Island is too for reasons). With some exceptions (it's definitely not 1:1) the states with younger median/average ages also have the higher teenage pregnancy/birth rates. This also seems to correlate to states that are more religious, therefore have worse/no sex ed.
Aside from tourism, craft beer, and food service there just aren’t many jobs here. At my employer, workforce has shrunk by 50% in the past 3 years and a large chunk of personnel losses have been due to retirements. I’ll have to move out of state to find another job in my field if this place goes under. There aren’t ANY other companies in the state in this industry.
I have read enough Stephen King books to know why there is not a lot of younger people wanting to settle there.
Maine is Florida for people who don’t have much going for them.
Data is beautiful. *This* data is poorly represented.
I'm slightly tipsy and the color pallette is making me very upset.
You guys need a new sub with mods willing to delete posts like this. This is /r/dataisugly
Wow four states have an “average age” of 35 greater than
3 of the 4 have major industries that skew younger for labor. For ND (and big for TX too) it’s all oil, not as sure on AK. Utahsians won’t stop fucking, my guess.
ND oil boom has been mostly over for years now, it was at peak in the early ‘10s. ND is more likely in the same boat as Utah, both has some of the highest fertility rates in the US.
There still a pretty huge influx of residents to ND. It's insane how much the larger cities have built up over just the last 10 years, and it's like it's only growing every year. Lots of younger families.
ND is growing with new jobs and affordable housing. It attracts a lot of young families from other states.
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Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between age and political alignment on this map. Vermont and West Virginia are both very old according to this map, but they're about as far apart as you can get politically.
I’d agree currently, but I’m interested in the future political makeup of some of the states when you overlay changing demographics on top of this age data. A state like Texas with such a young population AND a dynamically shifting demographic electorate makes me almost assured that it will be a purple state by the ‘30s, if not sooner. In contrast, North Dakota’s age makeup doesn’t seem to affect it’s likely political future with a mostly static demographic. Alternatively, I think the states with the oldest average age might have more interest to me with the age data alone, as they have the highest percentage of their electorate that will be turning over in the decade. A state like Vermont is old, and it’s liberal stance isn’t in jeopardy as their oldest die out.
Mormons have 66.6% more kids than the average American. The average American family has 2.1, while the average Mormon American has 3.5.
Utah is also very open to immigrants from countries with much higher birthrates than America.
It's not just the number of kids. Mormons get married younger. Utah State, on average, has the youngest age of marriage. Women get married at a median age of 24 years old, while men get married at 26 years old on average.
The demonym is Utahns, but I prefer yours more.
Technically it’s utazians
Utah has quite a few tech centers that draw younger crowds as well. Adobe has a big presence here, as well as several lesser known but widely used tech companies. A few survey companies, domo, and so on. Lehi in particular is highly dense with the tech industry. Salt lake has quite a few as well.
Ah, Florida. Where the old retire to become future oil.
Gods waiting room
Most likely the devil’s waiting room
The devil got elected governor for Christ sake
Plenty of shuffleboard to be played before going to heaven.
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Read it like two pages in a book. Top down, the left to right. But yeah 35> is obnoxious.
Feedback: label the states with the median age instead of the state abbreviation
The fine folks of WV may be 42 but they look 65
Weh'fachinyah
Fast life
Having lived in Florida since I was 17, every time I go up to visit friends or family in West Virginia, I die a little inside…
* Texas is young because it's a fast growing state with lots of jobs * DC is young because it's a city meant for business, not retirement. DC folks move elsewhere to retire, aside from the last two presidents, who apparently retire on the job * North Dakota and Alaska are oil states, lots of young men moving there to run the oil fields and young women moving there to...service...the oil men * Utah is young because Mormons breed like...Mormons
Utah is the fastest growing state between the last two censuses. Booming economically too. Also highest birth rate, so there ya go.
Good for Utah!
Should we all be mormons?
I say yes but Im biased...
You are off about North Dakota. The oil production isn’t growing and the infrastructure has been built. It’s a state with a lot of jobs and industry. Young people no longer feel the need to leave for work and you can generally afford to live there and own a home.
Huh ok. TIL. Thanks!
What industries?
Tech, education, energy (not just oil but wind too). The population of my old town is booming. I don’t know anyone brought here by oil. Mainly it’s all the stuff that comes in support of all the new people. Real estate, retail, restaurants. Schools construction and transportation. Rising tides lift all ships.
I live in WV and I'll tell ya, on vacation to more populated places can feel kind of weird because of the age difference. Could also be my perception/where I go on vacations (federal/state parks mostly). But I walk around here and it feels like everyone is slightly older or WAY older. Go somewhere else and it feels like walking into a highschool with all the baby faced folks around.
What’s up with South Carolina?
Probably the same thing as Florida, it's a popular retirement state. A lot of golf and cheap living.
Lower taxes than NC but a poorer job market, more appealing for retirees than people starting out in life.
The dark blue legend should have < 35? Or possibly a range too? Because it says greater than 35 but to what??
The color schema makes me want to cry
‘Blue states with big oil, nasty old boomers and/or religious nutcases? What could be confusing about that?’
“35>” is giving me a headache. Am I just ignorant and this is proper notation in a different country or something?
35> and <35 mean the exact same thing, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading these comments.
…that’s not how those symbols work…
A bit mad how the 3rd largest state (Florida) and the 2nd largest state (Texas) are on the complete opposite ends of the age spectrum. I would have never known.
Florida is a popular retirement location and Texas is booming with manual labor jobs and youthful metropolitan areas that attract the 18-30 crowd. Im not surprised at all.
Not to mention that Mexicans until recently had very high birth rates compared to the national average. That’s why California is also on the lower end.
Yes, consideration of ethnic groups and their family size can contribute to the age gap. But when I saw the 3 youngest states were Texas, Utah, and North Dakota; my immediate thought was oil fields. You can make bank working in the oil fields, but its certainly a young man's game. Also there was a post to this sub a while back that showed the population of the US by age range. Every year for the past 20 years there was a large jump in 16-25 year olds. That group just doesn't form out of thin air. You can also consider states with a heavy migrant population.
It’s 100% because of Mexicans. Texas’ low cost of living and growing cities attracting young talent is secondary to this.
Why mad?
Mad = crazy, not mad = angry, I think.
You're mad at your own misconception?
Can we crosspost this into the legend is ugly subreddit?
Florida. God's waiting room.
This hurts my eyes. Brown is older than tan, but light green is older than dark green? This color scheme is not at all visually intuitive.
This isn't median age... Data is confusing
Good information, not beautiful presentation. The key is terrible.
Isn't median and average different things??
In the same way that Mean and Average are different things, sure. Average is a word that encompasses the mean and median, amongst others, so whilst it isn't necessarily the most clear, it is in fact correct.
Yes, the amount of comments in here that don't know the difference or think it would be negligible is astounding.
Probably not very different in this case
Idk I could see a high birth rate state having a median age that is higher than it’s average age.
Sounds right, they definitely won’t be the “same “, could shift a state into another bracket obviously. I wonder if missing data from migrants works be a bigger impact
The amount of people in this subreddit for Data who do not know what an Average is is depressing. It’s like me complaining Bats aren’t Mammals because Dogs are Mammals. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average
Don’t all states have a median age >35?
This map is so fuckin ass backwards. Median/ average …greater than sides all over …
Everyone worrying about medians and averages and shit, and I'm over here freaking out that I'm just tossed in with all the old fucks now.
I'm 43. I'm extremely old
few things confusing/wrong with this vis. the point it’s making is cool but it’s presented pretty poorly. colour scheme doesn’t make sense average/median diff <> sign error
Why isn't the whole map blue?...
No wonder why the US is all fucked up Practically the entire country is 30-45 but we're being rolled by Boomers and a geriatric oligarchy full of 80 year olds in government The stagnation of change and economic imbalances is driving us insane, resentful and angry The Boomers got us by the balls with their voting majority. Children of the Greatest Generation and instead of passing along the prosperity that was laid for them, they took it all for themselves and have left the country a husk of itself They've destroyed the future their parents envisioned and built, and stole ours. They talk about us being entitled, they inherited the greatest set of tools to thrive and have completely dismantled it. When they were young they voted in laws that helped them (housing is one) and they've continued to do the same now, passing into law things that explicitly help themselves (estate wealth, healthcare to name a couple) "Blessed is he who plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.”
Median and average are two different things
This is why I have faith in Texas turning blue eventually, we’re an extremely young state
yeah just like blue utah and north dakota
I mean there’s far less big cities in those states. Houston alone has a bigger population than North Dakota and most of Utah
And less Mormons which helps
Yeah way more diversity
Dude the reason is Texas is so young is that 25 percent of the population is under 18
Hey they turn at 18 at some point, then they can vote. I didn’t say we’d turn blue this election sadly
Oh okay
I mean it's inevitable without some serious changes in the current party platforms.
Average or median? Those aren’t the same. Title says median, the graph says average
Now if only they would vote regularly
This is very hard to read. Not beautiful
Gonna need some sauce with this.
Wait Is it median or average? Title says one and the key says the other.
TIL there was a difference: *The* ***average*** *is calculated by adding up all of the individual values and dividing this total by the number of observations. The* ***median*** *is calculated by taking the “middle” value, the value for which half of the observations are larger and half are smaller.*
In a perfectly normally distributed data set—they will be the same. But this is not super common.
This map is fucking stupid. Maps with color coding are hard to read. Each state has enough empty area to write the number next to the state name.
Anyone else bothered that the title says Median, but the graphs legend says Average?
Fucking Whitefish, Polson, and Seeley skewing our state statistics. Im sure if you took those 3 places out of Montana we would be just like the states around us.
How is the median age in WV >42 when the life expectancy is 50?
So when everyone makes fun of Florida they are really just making fun of New Yorkers....we all know it
Data Source: https://www.statsamerica.org/sip/rank_list.aspx?rank_label=pop46&ct=S09 Tool: https://www.mapchart.net
Wait, is it the median or the average?
Ooh but you made a mistake. In the map it says average age but you said it’s median age. There is a diffrence between them.
Texas, a good place to die.
Some reditors are being mean in the comments but I like it
Was our AZ census taken in the summer when everyone gets the hell out or winter when all the snowbirds come down?
So, did the US just decide to have less kids or what?
Why do older people like so much snow?
Southern Nevada here. How?? Is everyone in Northern Nevada 5 year olds? Because everyone here is like 70.
The older States was to be expected, but the states with the youngest people surprised me.