Alan Minyard wrote:

On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:22:37 GMT, "Gord Beaman" ) wrote:

"No Spam!" wrote:

Unfortunately, it's a little appreciated fact that half of the world's
population is below average in intelligence

I seem to be having trouble making sense out of this
statement...perhaps you could enlighten me please?...

Well, since the "average" is the mean, half will be
above it and half will be below it. Thus it is
correct to say "half of the world's population is below
average intelligence". How one goes about measuring
"intelligence" is a different kettle of fish.

Al Minyard

Of course!...that's my point...He's saying it as if it were a bad
thing when it couldn't be any other way. It's like saying "The
average is the average".

He could just as correctly have said "Half of the world's
population is above average in intelligence".

--

-Gord.