[lbo-talk] re: grist for the culture angst mill

snit snat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Fri Jun 11 16:30:44 PDT 2004


At 06:10 PM 6/11/2004, Michael Pollak wrote:


>On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, snit snat wrote:
>
> > >Right. But he's wrong. If he was right, the average would change but
> > >the median would stay the same. Instead, the median has changed, as he
> > >himself admits.
> >
> > huh? the word median doesn't occur in that article.
>
>But the word "midpoint" does. They are synonyms. Midpoint means median,
>not average.
>
>Michael

pshaw. DR FLEGAL, who did the research, is talking about the midRANGE on the BMI chart. Midrange is the part in the chart, that says overweight: http://www.freedieting.com/tools/bmi_calculator.htm

At the lower end of the weight distribution, nothing has changed, not even by a few pounds. As you move up the scale, a few additional pounds start to show up, but even at midrange, people today are just 6 or 7 pounds heavier than they were in 1991. Only with the massively obese, the very top of the distribution, is there a substantial increase in weight, about 25 to 30 pounds, Dr. Flegal reported.

here's how this can happen, QAD-like:

10 5'5" women:

1 @ 115 1 @ 120 2 @ 130 2 @ 140 2 @ 160 2 @ 180

median: 135 mean: 145.5 % in normal weight range: 60%

10 5'5" women:

1 @ 115 1 @ 120 2 @ 130 2 @ 150 2 @ 185 2 @ 205

median: 135 mean: 155.5 % in normal weight range: 40%



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