Wealthy Americans? A Lesson on Median vs. Mean

[canyonwalker]

A few days ago in a forum I follow an overseas member posted, "OMG, Americans are so wealthy!" with a link to this CNBC article (8 Mar 2021) about the average net worth in the US. In particular she focused on the figures in the far right column of this table:
Household net worth by age
Age of head of familyMedian net worthAverage net worthLess than

Comments

[some_other_dave]

Small coincidence: The day before you published this, XKCD was this:

https://xkcd.com/2435/

[canyonwalker]

Yeah, a small coincidence. I had this in my queue for a few days. FWIW I regard that XKCD strip as not one of Randall's better ones. It's in the range of "inside joke for people who took a lot of math classes". I better like the strips where he explains tech-heavy concepts in ways that tech-light people can understand. There's a real need for that in the world, and Randall is one of the few best at it.