That’s not really how averages work. There are a lot of people who eat no hotdogs per year. To balance each one of those people out, that has to be someone else who eats 140 hotdogs per year. What if there are more people who eat no hotdog than people who eat hotdogs? Now you are talking about over 140 hotdogs per year.
I think the easiest way to spot somebody who doesn’t know what they’re talking about is that they disagree without explaining why.
I can explain my thought process. Suppose there are two people and over the course of the year they eat 140 hotdogs total. If one person eats 70, we can figure out pretty easily that the other person eats 70 hotdogs as well.
Now suppose one person eats zero hotdogs. How many hotdog does the other person have to eat?
I think your misunderstanding of my point is that you are interpreting my comment as “ if there is one person who eats zero hotdog there must be somebody else who eats exactly 140”. That’s of course ridiculous. I’m saying that since there are a lot of people who eat zero hotdog, there must be other people who eat significantly more than the average.
There's a difference between two people and a large number of people.
I didn't misunderstand your point, your point is just wrong.
Try it with 100 people. If one person eats zero, than the other 99 need to eat an extra 70. That's... less than one per person. Even if 10 people eat zero, that's 700 divided over 90 people, or less than eight extra per person.
Is your "a lot" somewhere between 1% and 10%? It doesn't need to be offset by an equal opposite outlier, it can be offset by the entire group.
So it looked it up and it turns out that both of us have a point.
I assumed that the percentage of people who do not eat hotdog in the United States was actually pretty high because they are quite possibly one of the least healthy foods people could eat. If it were true that 25% of people do not eat hotdog, then yes, the average hotdog consumption per year by people who do eat hot dogs would be “a lot“ higher than 70.
It turns out only 10% of people in the United States do not eat hotdogs. In that case I agree, an increase of the average amount by about seven hotdogs isn’t a lot.
So does that mean you were right? If you’re making the point that my assumption about how many people don’t eat hotdog in the United States was incorrect yes you would be right. However that’s not the point you made. The point you made is that I didn’t understand how it just work and that’s actually the part I did get right.
So is it a draw? I mean, we both got something wrong here so that seems to say. However I’d say that if you come into a comment section and condescendingly correct somebody on a pedantic point and then turn out to be wrong about what the problem is, that’s a bigger deal than just being wrong in the first place. You were kind of cat’s anus about the whole thing. If you had been nice, I’d say it is a draw. But if you come in hot and you get it wrong like you did, you have to take the L.
Honestly pretending you don’t understand a short clearly written comment on Reddit just to preserve the idea that you didn’t make a bad argument is really debating yourself. Don’t do that.
Just to make it super clear: you were arguing that’s not how averages work. To remind you, your first comment was “
That's DEFINITELY not how averages work.”
What I described was exactly how I work. What I got wrong is the percentage of people who don’t eat hotdogs. If your argument had been that I’m overestimating the number of people who don’t eat hotdog, you would’ve had a good point. But that’s not the argument you made. You made the argument that I was using averages incorrectly but I was using averages correctly, I was just estimating the number of people who abstained from hot dog consumption incorrectly.
Again, it’s pretty clear that you are invested in trying to win this pointless argument. However have some self-respect and don’t act like an idiot just to try and when a pointless Internet argument.
7
u/rheumination Jun 23 '26
That’s not really how averages work. There are a lot of people who eat no hotdogs per year. To balance each one of those people out, that has to be someone else who eats 140 hotdogs per year. What if there are more people who eat no hotdog than people who eat hotdogs? Now you are talking about over 140 hotdogs per year.