Misleading Claims
The actual median salary among Texas NBA players was $[latex]1,577,320[/latex] while the mean salary was $[latex]5,262,279[/latex].
Use this information to complete Questions 4-6:
question 4
question 5
question 6
video placement
[Guidance: “Consider your answers to Questions 3 – 6. [voice over images of the dotplot with the vertical lines drawn] What did you consider to be a “typical” salary? What characteristic of this variable’s distribution caused the mean to be different from the median?”]
Now consider the following scenario. An NBA recruiter for the Houston Rockets approaches a promising college basketball player and says, “the typical salary among Texas NBA players is $[latex]5,262,279[/latex].”
question 7
video placement
[insert a sub-summary here. “How did you your answer the question, “is the recruiter’s statement misleading?” Did you consider the mean to be a “typical” salary among these NBA players? What could the recruiter have said instead? That it is likely a player would make $5.3 million by joining the team? That is is possible for some highly skilled and talented players? Or would it have been less misleading for the recruiter to have emphasized the median salary of $1.58 million? If you were in the prospective player’s position, would you have asked to see the distribution to make your own assessment? Which value would you have used, mean or median, if you were in the recruiter’s position?”]
You’ve seen that the mean, under certain conditions, can be a misleading indicator of a “typical” observation value, such as the salary of a professional basketball player. Now try to apply this understanding to some other types of data collections.
