Errata: The Average Saturday
The idea: an average can be pulled a long way by a few big numbers; ask what the middle one looks like too.
Read it
Who is in this book
- Sofia The spread matters as much as the average — every team has high and low days from InferForge
- Deed Go to the original document, not a summary of a summary from NewsForge
- Danya a child of the Green Asks "how do we know?"
- Widen One number means little without something to compare it with from NewsForge
- Attest Every claim names its source, and a correction names one too from NewsForge
- Tara a child of the Green Listens longest, speaks last
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts of this story are true, stretched or made up?
True
- The mean is the total shared out equally: add up every value and divide by how many there are. The median is the middle value when they are written in order. A few very large values can pull the mean far above the median. Source
- The twenty-five replies in the case add up to £1,200, so their mean is £48. Written in order, the thirteenth is £20, and twenty-three of them are below £48. Without the two largest, the other twenty-three add up to £550, about £24 each.
- In the United Kingdom, the National Minimum Wage for workers under 18 was £7.55 an hour from April 2025. Source
Stretched
- In the case, one small survey is read and settled in one afternoon. What we simplified: A survey of the people who chose to answer may not look like everyone it is about. Real pay surveys ask many more people and say how they were chosen.
Made up
- The survey, its twenty-five replies, Hattie, Callum, Bea, Mr Fenwick's shop and the Green Gazette's front page are made up. The idea of the mean and the median is real.
Tara’s sentence
The case stops where Tara speaks. Write the sentence you would have said. It stays on this device.
Kept.
Your sentence lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Ring the hammer for someone
Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.