Question #8c8aa
1 Answer
The "average age" of the population is younger or older than the median age of the population.
Explanation:
This is one good use of comparing medians with means, or averages. They are usually pretty close in "normally distributed" populations, but the show a shift to one side or the other when the data is skewed. That is, data points are not symmetrically distributed around the mean.
So, if the mean (average) is 28 and the median is 35, the population is "young". If the mean is 36 and the median is 30 the population is "older".
Sometimes the mode will also show that skew, with the majority of values in a class being below or over the mean value, respectively.
The terms could also be used when comparing mean population values between countries. In that case the individual country populations may be normally distributed, but the difference in mean ages between countries could be significantly different.
For example, one country could have a mean age of 27 while another one has a mean age of 38. The first one might be considered to have a "younger" population than the second one.
That is another way to observe the impact of changes in economies, politics and geography.
