Have you noticed that the average apartment size in your area is rather small, but when you ask your neighbors, most of them tell you that they live in bigger apartments? Or that the average salary in your company seems low, but when you talk to your colleagues, most of them seem to earn more than that? Or that the traffic in your city is terrible, but most people you know commute by public transport?
How can these paradoxes arise, and who’s right?
You may feel like you’re the unlucky one who always gets the shorter end of the stick, but actually it might just be that these statistics are playing tricks on you!
In this story, I will explain how this phenomenon arises by helping you solve a concrete exercise on the topic:
The dean of a famous university claims that they offer a more personalized learning experience because the average number of students in their classes is very low. And yet, in the classroom students complain about the exact opposite! The average class feels packed with lots of people and the training sessions are loud and scattered. How is that possible?
Suppose that there are 16 seminar courses, which have 10 students each, and 2 large lecture…