perhaps if I paraphrase, the idiocy of the Oxfam statement will become clearer?
"Poverty is measured here as below 60 per cent of contemporary median net disposable income in 2000/01"
Paraphrased: "Poverty is defined as being 60 per cent of a moving target which we have arbitrarily set at a time in the past for no real reason" - I have ranted elsewhere that lack of a colour television (which is one of the UK government definitions!) does not mean that you live in *poverty*.
The preamble to the wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median - is quite good, especially the comment "At most, half the population have values less than the median and at most half have values greater than the median.". What this means is that the median will ALWAYS divide a population, IRRESPECTIVE of what the *total* is. So, a median point is a cheat.
Remember - "truth, lies, damned lies, and statistics" ;)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-11-07 04:24 pm (UTC)"Poverty is measured here as below 60 per cent of contemporary median net disposable income in 2000/01"
Paraphrased:
"Poverty is defined as being 60 per cent of a moving target which we have arbitrarily set at a time in the past for no real reason" - I have ranted elsewhere that lack of a colour television (which is one of the UK government definitions!) does not mean that you live in *poverty*.
The preamble to the wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median - is quite good, especially the comment "At most, half the population have values less than the median and at most half have values greater than the median.". What this means is that the median will ALWAYS divide a population, IRRESPECTIVE of what the *total* is. So, a median point is a cheat.
Remember - "truth, lies, damned lies, and statistics" ;)
Does that help?