Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
AVERAGES DO NOT EXIST
AVERAGES DO NOT EXIST
Thursday, December 11, 2014
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Averages obscure reality.
Leaving an impression that an average is actual and ascertainable, rather than hypothetical and temporal, mathematical and statistical averages distort the truth of vast vectors of existence.
Averages, nee averaging, warp public law and public policy. They engender reliance on illusions that are not. Similarly, any ensuing efforts based on such averages are stillborn, are doomed to fail “ab initio.”
While the whole is greater than the sum of its part necessarily, in averaging, the opposite obtains, with the whole actually being projected as less than the sum of its parts—“whole” being the average, itself. This is false, deceptive, and dangerous, creating beliefs based on nothing but speculative estimations.
Averages, therefore, are avatars that are not. Straight-up hoodoo!
Finding a physical specimen, a concrete representative of an average, is a vain search. They do not exist.