Average and Median - don't confuse them!

Median: The middle number (in a sorted list of numbers).

To find the Median, place the numbers you are given in value order and find the middle number.

Example: find the Median income of $13,000, $23,000, $11,000, $16,000, $15,000, $10,000, and $26,000.

First, put the numbers in order: {10,000, 11,000, 13,000, 15,000, 16,000, 23,000, 26,000}

The middle number is 15,000, so the median is $15,000.

Average: A calculated "central" value of a set of numbers.

To calculate: add up all the numbers, then divide by how many numbers there are.

Example: what is the average income of workers making $13,000, $23,000, $11,000, $16,000, $15,000, $10,000, and $260,000?

Add up all of the numbers: 10,000 + 11,000 + 13,000 + 15,000 + 16,000 + 23,000 + 260,0000 = 348,000

Divide by how many numbers (i.e. we added 7 numbers): 348,000 ÷ 7 = 49,714

So the average income is $49,714.

Only one person in that ordered list makes more than an average income!

Another Example: Three men are riding up in an elevator.

One makes $25,000 one $50,000 and one $75,000.

The average income is $50,000. ($150,000 / 3)

Bill gates gets on the elevator, the average income immediately went up to almost $3 Billion!

The Tea-bagger in the group said: "See how much better off everyone now is?" (Their average income went WAY up!)

The MEDIAN income in the USA is... $51,017

The Average income in the USA is... closer to $114,000!

The top 1 percent is defined as households with incomes above $394,000 in 2012.

In fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand.

The pay gap between the richest 1 percent and 'the rest of America' widened to a new record in 2012.

The top 1 percent of earners collected 19.3 percent of all household income in 2012, their largest share in Internal Revenue Service figures going back a century.

U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades (Reaganomics). But until last year, the top 1 percent’s share of pre-tax income hadn’t surpassed the 18.7 percent it reached in 1927, according to an analysis of IRS figures dating to 1913 by economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and three colleagues.

Top 1% = $368,238
(20.9% of all household income)
Top 0.5% = $558,726
(16.8% of all household income)
Top 0.1% = $1,695,136
(10.3% of all household income)
Top 0.01% = $9,141,190
(5% of all household income)
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