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Posted by bumerry on September 9, 2003 07:42 PM. Actually,no reason in nature why half a population must be above average and half below average in weight. The definition of average does not require it. That is.. assuming that by "average" we mean the statistical "mean" and not the samples "median". By definition, half of all people must samples weight more than the "median" weight. Generally, average is conotes "mean" and not "median". But, some people do use the term in a vague way. So, who knows? The reason some people think half samples the population must fall above the mean and half below the mean is they assume that weight follows a bell curve. Weight in humans does not follow a bell shaped curve. I've seen histograms of BMI distributions; they look highly assymetric . The actual histogram has a very, very long tail at the high end of BMI. They resemble the "Poisson" distribution much more than the Normal, or "Bell" shape curve. (The bell shaped curve is generally called a "Normal" distribution.)
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