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Re: "Order of Magnitude" questions



Now that our meeting is over I can report

1) that our Order of Magnitude question for this meeting was "What
is the ratio of the average density of the Milky Way Galaxy to
that of our Solar System"

2) that we have never had a larger range of orders of magnitude
for the responses

3) that had we awarded the prize to the answer closest to the
arithmetic mean, the largest answer would have won (as usual)

4) that had we awarded the prize to the answer closest to the
geometric mean, the smallest answer would have won (far less
common) and

5) that five people tied for the prize, all giving the same median
answer.

I won't spoil your fun by saying any more just yet.

John Mallinckrodt mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm

On Sat, 21 Apr 2001, brian whatcott wrote:

Disappointing that the answers would not a cluster round a
single mode in such a talented group!

Brian

At 21:47 4/17/01 -0700, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
The "Order of Magnitude" question has become a fixture at our
meetings. The way we handle it is to declare the winner to be the
person who provides the median answer. (The winner gets first
pick of the door prizes.) It turns out to be critical to use
something like the median rather than the mean for this purpose