What Is the Most Average Thing?

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We may not know it, but averages affect our lives every day. Designers and manufacturers use averages to make our houses, cars, shoes and airline seats safer and more comfortable(ish). But calculating averages is way more complicated than one might think! And as long as we are at it - let’s talk about what the most average thing in the known universe might be!
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[@besmart]

What do YOU think is the most average thing? Extra points if you show your work 🧐

[@Lucifer_.._]

Probably being born

[@luker.6967]

Virtual particles? Most common thing in the universe kinda? I don't really know what I'm talking about so someone please elaborate on my claim.

[@-Thauma-]

Breathing.

[@StitchTheFox]

All together I think the question is flawed because what "the average of all things" means varies from person to person. If we are talking about tallying up everything in the universe and the parts that make each up and counted them as separate things and then found which was the most likely to be chosen at random, then I would say neutrinos. I have been told there are roughly a billion neutrinos for every hydrogen atom in the universe.

[@GrannyRoberta]

I feel you've purposely skewed your definitions to avoid the most average thing, which would be vacuum.

[@MinuteEarth]

We give this video a solid C

[@aestaetic07]

hey you’re here! hope everyone who sees this has a good day :)

[@shalabazertheboltstruck8645]

Goooood ooooneeee hahah

[@ekkekrosing8454]

Yooo, ive watched you since I was like 7!

[@amazingajax2343]

future engineer! @@ekkekrosing8454

[@PhysicsPolice]

Should be an F for gross conceptual errors. Neither number is correct. They used Wolfram Alpha which has an incorrect radius for UY Scuti. Quarks, like electrons, are point-like and so have zero size. This number 10^-18 looks like it comes from an experiment placing an upper limit on size. It's scientifically unjustified to use it in this manner. Geometric mean is not physically meaningful.

[@Isaac_L..]

The below average knitter line made me do a double take lol

[@Tyrannosaurus_Wrexx]

Right?!! Even with the cut scene to the below average knitting, itself

[@projectoek9453]

knitter please...

[@dendaking]

more like a triple take

[@epiphi]

RIGHT. Replayed that three times just to be _sure_ it was "knitter".

[@itslullas]

*Insert HE'S A KNITTER! Arthur meme*

[@Thebeetleguy]

It is pretty eye opening when you consider that a tardigrade is the same distance in size to Uy Scuti as it is to a quark. It really goes to show how small a quark really is!

[@agustinfranco0]

and that we, humans, are closer to be the size of the biggest star, than to a quark. thats insane.

[@Kapullus]

humans are closer to the size of the universe than a planck length

[@brolythegoat]

⁠@@Kapulluswe’re a billion times closer the to the biggest thing than we are to the smallest thing

[@AbelShields]

Finding "the average power of 10 between the two" seems a lot more like a geometric mean rather than an arithmetic mean!

[@MichaelStangeland]

More than seems. It is without a doubt the geometric mean. I watched this video to the end hoping Joe would talk about that... fairly disappointed.

[@JoaoPessoa86]

Airplane seats *WERE* designed to fit an average size comfortably before someone realized there was a tolerance for discomfort vs. price

[@lonestarr1490]

And with that it was MAXIMIZATION TIME!

[@JoaoPessoa86]

@@lonestarr1490 and I'm afraid the limit has not been found yet

[@amirbahalegharn365]

in another video i learnt that when planes were made, it only has 3-5 seats but it's airplane companies that has used to the practices' of adding 2-4 seats in each line depending on plane width. so those premium luxury planes we see are the real deal that should've been norms but for profits reasons, we have been robed of them, just like everlasting lamps ,etc

[@JakkeJakobsen]

And people have grown... in width

[@luged]

​@@JakkeJakobsenand height. The average height has increased.

[@Justlaxin13]

"What is the most average thing?" is SUCH a decade-ago Vsauce video title.

[@PhysicsPolice]

At least Vsauce uses correct numbers and doesn't confuse arithmetic mean with geometric mean.

[@AceSpadeThePikachu]

But DO chairs exist?

[@Somebodyherefornow]

@@PhysicsPolicei mean…its PBS

[@HiGlowie]

Eh, Be Smart is actually a decent channel. At least, it promotes education and learning.

[@PhysicsPolice]

@@HiGlowie Yep. It’s got a lot of potential. That’s why videos like this one are such a disappointment.

[@stevieinselby]

The arithmetic mean of Ooti Scooti and a quark would be basically half the size of Ooti Scooti, because you add them up and divide by 2. The tardigrade is the geometric mean, which considers measurement on a log scale rather than a linear scale. This would actually be a far better way to measure distances along a range in many cases and certainly fits with our _perception_ of scale, but it is rarely used and little understood by, ahem, the average joe. *Consider the question:* what is the diameter of the sun? Two people guess, one says 3 million kilometres and the other says 3 millimetres. The actual answer is 1.4 million kilometres. Who was closer? Intuitively, it feels like the person who said 3 million km is closer, they were out by a _factor_ of 2.1, whereas the idiot who said 3mm was out by a _factor_ of 1,000,000,000,000 ... but 9 times out of 10 we would calculate the difference as 1399999999997mm and 1600000000000mm and say the second number is bigger and so the guess of 3mm was closer.

[@spiralpython1989]

So therefore the most average thing is a well fed, adult, female flea.

[@metadexter]

This is such an interesting thought, thanks for sharing :)

[@cvp5882]

Ooti Scooti lol

[@madhououinkyoma]

So actually like 10^6m, or ~.1 Earth. Very good point and I'm not sure why he didn't do this as that's the mean people usually think about...

[@VincentZalzal]

Thanks, I went to the comments to talk about the geometric mean, happy to see someone already did!

[@soyokou.2810]

In math, there are many different ways to find a mean value on many different objects. For regular real numbers, there are power means defined by ((a^t+b^t)/2)^(1/t) which generalizes the usual mean as well as the geometric and harmonic means. You can also define means on matrices, and these have various applications in geometry.

[@cs8712]

The problem with a universe-sized data set is the UY skewties the average

[@petterlarsson7257]

ever heard of a geometric mean

[@ojasdeshpande478]

​@@petterlarsson7257it's a pun

[@incription]

this is totally a scientist level joke

[@oO0catty0Oo]

OMG

[@joshsnyder4868]

This was such a nonsense comment until I watched the video

[@zwiebackman]

Physicist here, sorry to be picky. But the exact sizes of electrons and quarks are not known, they are usually considered to have no size at all. But even the upper bound is smaller than the sizes you mentioned in the video:/ Apart from that, great video:)

[@KungFuKeni]

Also UY scuti being the largest structure is arbitrary at best and wrong at worst. Firstly black holes exist and secondly the reasoning for galactic filaments and galaxies themselves being dismissed was bs.

[@madhououinkyoma]

yeah the conclusion to the video and some definitions not being clarified kinda made it not be as educational in the end

[@Canyon_Lark]

Didn’t he decide that he was going with volume and not mass? That would eliminate black holes as they have little to no volume. The size of the event horizon is just how light interacts with it, not the size of the actual mass of the object

[@hiimapop7755]

I just want to let you know that out of all the Average Joe's, you're the most interesting one for consistently uploading these incredibly intriguing videos about topics I only pondered about at most whenever I'm bored.

[@michaelbrantley6039]

I love how you added Isiah Thomas to the dream team data set as the extra...that was a nice touch. True basketball fans

[@besmart]

In reality if Thomas was added then I shoulda taken out Jordan 😂

[@michaelbrantley6039]

@@besmart yeah, for sure, mj definitely had him blacklisted. I don't see him passing the ball to mj if he's the point guard on that team

[@somethinglikethat2176]

​@@michaelbrantley6039 tbf Scottie, Larry and Magic had beef with the BB Pistons. Not unreasonably, but how much of it was on Zeke and how much of it was guilt by association with his team-mates is a reasonable question.

[@michaelbrantley6039]

@@somethinglikethat2176 zeke was the one that organized/led that disrespectful, unsportsmanlike like walj off at the end of the bulls-pistons series the year before

[@DragicornGames]

My method for finding a Mode is to yell "Edna! EDNA!!!" That usually works.

[@besmart]

NO. CAPES.

[@cathaloshea1242]

Nah bro didnt say knitter. No way. 0:52

[@JuBerryLive]

0:52 wat?

[@whoreslayer]

same I checked it qgain just to make sure

[@fep_ptcp883]

Wat did u call me homie?

[@whoreslayer]

@@fep_ptcp883 n word

[@beastinsince85]

My jaw dropped for a second

[@anassoubahha6614]

Thank you so much for this amazing content !

[@xxMLP]

The Batman transition to the dictionary brought me way too much joy. You and your team are gems of untold value, truly anything but average.

[@gavinjones]

Someone list the timestamp for it please

[@almach6279]

@@gavinjones 2:26 I think

[@gavinjones]

​@@almach6279i see it now, thanks

[@MOSMASTERING]

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na-naaaaah

[@YoungGandalf2325]

Jim the Tardigrade thinks he has a pretty ordinary life, but all he needs is a little perspective to see that he's far from average.

[@luqmangabarti]

Are they right-handed, a resident of China, not a car/bank account owner, and making less than 12k a year?

[@michaelrae9599]

I remember this from college. It has helped me Immensely in understanding and questioning data and filtering out the false or misconstrued data.

[@CasualRiders]

That closing line hits deep. Thanks Joe! Needed to hear that!

[@PRIYANSH_SUTHAR]

I feel that the most average thing which is an average of so many things will be so unstable that it is impossible to assign a fixed value to that average. That average value will greatly oscillate and we will have to take an innumerable number of average of averages of averages and so on.

[@lonestarr1490]

Easy peasy. Simply pass to the limit of that averaging process (the limit does indeed exist by virtue of the sandwich theorem).

[@TheGrinningViking]

If we're averaging everything, it's vacuum.

[@gogauze]

Honestly, I was gonna scroll until I realized that this is a line of reasoning that, for once, actually terminates in our current understanding of QFT (for now).

[@altrag]

Generally speaking, its quite the opposite - the more "things" you're averaging over, the more stable the value becomes. That's simply because each individual "thing" contributes less to averaging process so removing or changing it alters the average less. Of course it depends on exactly what you mean by "fixed value". If you mean a mathematically exact answer then the stability is identical regardless of how many "things" you're averaging over, as the change in any one thing would change the average whether the total number of things is 2 or 2 quintillion. But that also doesn't matter as its not possible to get mathematically exact answers in almost any case, and certainly not for any interesting case. Anything that requires measurement (such as mass or volume) is immediately cut out due to the fact that our measurement devices are not infinitely accurate. Sure you can measure the height of a basketball team to the nearest inch and average that, but that average is not going to be accurate as people don't grow in exactly one-inch increments. Almost all of the members will be an eighth or a quarter or a 38234/9428928th above or below an exact inch. Even with simple counted numbers though its often difficult to get a mathematically exact average, primarily for one reason: By the time your data set is large enough to be interesting, it simultaneously becomes extremely difficult to the point of impossible to be sure you counted every "thing" exactly once - no misses and no double counts. No country on the planet knows exactly how many citizens they have, for example. Even the best census system is going to miss some homeless people or those who actively evade it. Some will double count because a person happened to move to an area that just completed the census to one that it hasn't yet reached, etc. Tens or hundreds of millions is just too many "things" to count accurately and therefore your "fixed value" will also not be exactly accurate. But that's fine. As Joe's definition near the start of the video implies, an average is useful to get the general idea of a set of data. They don't have to be mathematically exact in order to fulfill that purpose - they just have to be "close enough", and that vagueness allows sufficient flexibility for an average to be considered "stable" as data sets get larger and any one "thing" becomes less important to the overall trend. (Barring severe outliers. Losing just one Bezos or Musk would significantly alter the mean income in the US for example, because their enormous wealth skews that particular average so far that any one of them is sufficient to outweigh a good double-digit percent of the lowest end of the scale. Wouldn't affect the median much though, which is why median income has become the preferred thing to talk about over the past few decades. Still way too easy to find the mean average though, especially in publications that are intentionally trying to make their country look better. The skew in the US is worse than most due to those small handful of billionaires, but the "problem" of having a small number of overly wealthy people skewing the mean exists in every country, even if its not to the same degree as billionaires.)

[@PRIYANSH_SUTHAR]

@@altrag But if that is, then the more you average the things out, the more things you are considering to do average over and thus it will just widen the range of values that were taken to draw the average. That is why it will just produce uncertainty in the actual central measure.

[@Dent42]

@besmart In the middle, you talk about the arithmetic mean (`(1/n) * Σxᵢ` from i = 1 to n), but at the end, you describe the geometric mean (`∏(xᵢ)^(1/n)` from i = 1 to n). They are related, but very distinct concepts. For example, the arithmetic mean of 1 and 16 is 8½ (via (1 + 16) * ½), but the geometric mean is 4 (via (1 * 16) ^ ½). Very different formulæ with very different uses.

[@danielchandi8198]

These videos are always fun to watch

[@DrAndrewSteele]

I’d like to add an above-average level of pedantry to the comments! (I hope it doesn’t sound mean.) • Technically the tardigrade is the _geometric_ mean thing in the universe-by taking the arithmetic mean of the powers of ten, you’re effectively doing √a×b which is the geometric mean. • The modal thing in the universe is probably not the quark, but the photon, or maybe neutrinos-there are far more of them than matter made of quarks! Or it might be some dark matter particle that we’ve not discovered yet… Great video btw!

[@arcturuslight_]

yes that

[@einfischnamenspanda3306]

Didnt he take the mean like 10^( (log10(a) + log10(b)) /2)? He just picked the middle number on a log scale

[@TheNewRobotMaster]

Yeah I was thinking the same thing but you uh said it first

[@DrAndrewSteele]

@@einfischnamenspanda3306 Yes, and that’s equivalent to multiplying them and taking the square root by the rules of logarithms, hence it’s the geometric mean :)

[@einfischnamenspanda3306]

@@DrAndrewSteele Damn you are right. Guess thats why no one commented it before 👀

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

I majored in philosophy specializing in the philosophy of physics. One of my favorite courses was mereology (the study of composite objects). I wrote a paper on whether a liquid helium nucleus is one boson or 4 fermions. My answer: either one, depending on why you're asking. The question you are really asking depends not just on the words, but also the context and that context informs which answer is more relevant in situations like this where there is a sense in which both answers could be considered correct. The answer that it is 4 fermions is more fundamental, but the answer that it is 1 boson is usually more useful. And in this video, I feel attacked by Joe. EDIT: In my senior thesis, I used the fact that we are each in the middle of our own observable universe, together with some facts about quantum mechanics, to alter some well established philosophical ideas about time to make them compatible with physics.

[@fruity4820]

I never knew philosophy of physics is a thing, good luck for you in your studies

[@bartolomeothesatyr]

I just commented myself that, for what is essentially an exposition on the practical applications of theoretical epistemology, this video dunks pretty hard on the practice of philosophy.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

@@fruity4820 Lol, I abandoned that and went to law school instead. As soon as I graduated, I realized that as fascinating as I find it, nobody else gives a crap. Now I study an esoteric area of Constitutional law with so few experts that I know just about all of them and I know more about it than almost all of them despite not being remotely well known myself. But unlike philisophy of physics, the esoteric area I study is the amendment process and I'm working on actually making the country better using it.

[@neeratyoy]

@@Sam_on_KZbin that is fascinating to hear and thanks for sharing? In your new law job with a (seemingly) clearer validation signal, do you still find the curiosity that a "philosophy of physics" may evoke in this new job? In other words, what is it that you are compromising on by not pursuing philosophy of physics. Extremely interested in your thought process. You do not seem to be a victim of the sunk cost fallacy and kudos to you!

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

@@neeratyoy I use what I learned studying philosophy all the time. I learned systematic critical thinking. I learned parsing dense language. I learned digging at concepts to find inconsistencies and finding arguments to reconcile them. I learned presentkng arguments and proving points. In law school, when we learned the Rule Against Perpetuities, most people struggled with it. I wrote down the rule in 1st order logic and got it pretty easily. I was far from the only philosophy major in law school. It is a fairly common path.

[@yashveersingh1795]

Thanks for the incredible video!! Loved it ❤❤❤❤

[@Jungleali]

Just subbed, nice work

[@Vincent_Preston]

I heard something different than "knitter" 😂😂

[@_evildoer]

WTF, same. Right after the break dancing too. I almost fell off my chair.

[@VictorGarcia-jz1if]

Same..good thing he brought out those knitting needles..otherwise.

[@cjc2010]

Oh, boy.

[@mitchellwilley7208]

​@_evildoer ikr I wasn't watch and I quickly turned my head back to the screen and saw him holding up knitting stuff 😂😂 man he's even got a an ockward smile where I paused like "see I said knitting 😅😅" 0:54

[@consciouscactus]

fr

[@geeteshgadkari]

Two points: 1. Considering only normal matter.. current estimate is that about 75% of normal matter is hydrogen. So median and mode "things in the universe" are both simply a Hydrogen atom. 2. Out of the SI base units, mole also quantifies size.

[@RandomGeometryDashStuff]

isn't mole unit of amount (how many ÷ avogadro number (big constant))?

[@hunterG60k]

Hydrogen was one of my first thoughts on thinking about this. But really, if we're talking about the entire universe, the average thing is going to be whatever dark energy is, isn't it?

[@Yonkage-ik5qb]

@@hunterG60k Dark energy is still entirely theoretical. There is zero evidence for it other than the fact that it must exist to balance the equations physicists currently have which otherwise explain the entire Universe. Personally, I prefer Occam's Razor which states that it is much more likely they are simply mistaken, rather than there being some invisible substance permeating all reality; this is also based on the fact that every model of the Universe devised by humanity which preceded this one was also wrong, or at least incomplete.

[@geeteshgadkari]

@@hunterG60k exactly. I am not sure if and how to consider dark energy and dark matter while counting things.. even if they exist, do they exist as particles? And if they are particles, are they more massive than a hydrogen atom? Because if they are significantly massive then the number of particles will be lesser even if total amoumt is higher. And for computing mean or mode we need the number of things And because of this i wrote "considering only normal matter" :-)

[@geeteshgadkari]

@@RandomGeometryDashStuff Yes exactly. So of the SI base units, mass, length and number of moles can be used to measure size.. rest of the units are independent of size.

[@almightysapling]

*thank you* for not defining average as mean. I'm so tired of people saying "that's not the average, that's the median!" as if a median isn't an average.

[@bALloOniSfOod]

“Size is a matter of perspective” *subscribed*

[@mrz98553]

Thank you for creating informative material and keeping it engaging! Keep up the great work!

[@andyspillum3588]

As a Pistons fan in my 50's, I whole heartedly approve of your (verry safe) selection, and sneaking Isiah on there at the end's Hi-Larios

[@ssemo]

Years and years later, Joe, still love you stuff.

[@nemanjaivanovic5973]

This video has a very Vsauce vibe to it. That’s not a bad thing - I am a big fan of both channels.

[@Chrispck05]

I’m pretty sure that Vsauce did this exact thing in a video

[@driverjayne]

I'm almost positive this is a radio lab episode from a couple years ago

[@MusicCriticDuh]

That knitter, joke tho.. lol

[@michalrola7017]

Yeah... I missheard it and was already looking for a new science channel lmao

[@OhOkayThenLazySusan]

I love when science and philosophy cross paths. This was a really great exploration of one of these crossings from a scientific perspective without abandoning the nuance (as scientists tend to do.) Kudos to all those who made this 👍🙏

[@dysfunc121]

This is something I have been confused about, great video!

[@Kislay11]

So we just jumping from an arithmetic to mean to a geometric mean huh? Coz the arithmetic mean of quark and UY Scuti is basically just half UY Scuti

[@EpicMathTime]

Yeah, the most important part (this is a logarithmic scale on base 10) was not really addressed. Since the numbers are on a logarithmic scale, the "middle" doesn't occur at the arithmetic mean.

[@PhysicsPolice]

Exactly! And there's no physical significance to the geometric mean. This is pure numerology.

[@PhysicsPolice]

@@EpicMathTime This doesn't really address the concern, which is why did they place the numbers on a logarithmic scale to begin with? This isn't physically justified.

[@dontletmememandie6506]

Fun fact: the average person has less than 2 legs or arms.

[@twotothehalf3725]

On average, a person _do_ have an average of 2 legs. While there are people with less than 2 legs, Legs Georg has enough surplus legs on him to pull the mean back to 2.

[@madhououinkyoma]

Yeah, probably like 1.99999~, so basically 2

[@scrydedoesyt]

@@madhououinkyomathere are lots more people with less than 2 legs than more…

[@madhououinkyoma]

@@scrydedoesyt Not the point, most people have 2 legs. Just pull your calculator.

[@scrydedoesyt]

i meant to reply to the other msg my bad@@madhououinkyoma

[@wezul]

Here's the trick I use to remember the types of Averages. Mean = the sum of all values divided by how many there are, what most people MEAN when they say Average Median = the value in the middle of sorted values, just like the MEDIAN is in the middle of the road Mode = the most frequently appearing value, as in "We went into (XYZ) MODE."

[@debracalie8847]

Thank you! I really think this one might stick.

[@MarvinPowell1]

That's way overly complicated. In school, I just learned it was: Mean = (What people mean by) Average Median = Medium Mode = The most

[@limeonque]

"Size just depends on perspective" Thank you

[@lara_xy]

this is really mind-boggling. I cannot comprehend sizes as small or large as these things you explained here 😅

[@Sara.T90]

Aw thanks, Joe! Maybe it's not so bad to be average after all. I burst out laughing when you said UY SCUTI and I haven't got a clue as to why. This was oodles of fun to watch and it was nice to be called smart.

[@nicoallen1738]

That dream team bit with Isiah Thomas was class, love the vid!

[@smith2luke]

Jordan disliked this video

[@nathanielschwartz425]

14:14 Joe: And that leaves us with… drumroll please… Ad: Fresh Air Deodorant. (Ironically, the scent of “fresh air” is probably the most average scent there is).

[@NeverTalkToCops1]

Quite well done!

[@archimidis]

15:04 Actually the arithmetic mean of the exponents is the GEOMETRIC mean. You should have explained that. I was getting to ready to say that finding the smallest thing is irrelevant, since it would contribute almost nothing to the arithmetic mean compared to the biggest.

[@m00hk00h]

Exactly. Took me totally by surprise and had skip back.

[@PhysicsPolice]

And the geometric mean has no physical significance. This is just numerology.

[@TheSpoegefugl]

"93% of Americans said they were safer behind the wheel than the average driver. That's impossible. That's not how numbers work." Then proceeds to dish out the different reasons that tells us it could technically be possible, and giving us a good example regarding salary and Bezos

[@extragoogleaccount6061]

So there is a driver out there that is so bad they bring down the average skill of millions of other drivers?

[@arcturuslight_]

@@extragoogleaccount6061 the guy with NULL number plate who receives thousands of tickets and police reports a day.

[@TheSpoegefugl]

@@extragoogleaccount6061 Maybe. All I'm saying, it's possible.

[@dariapetrushenko1293]

Thank you for an interesting video!

[@your_average_joe5781]

✅

[@sca04245]

1:20 depends on how you define average based on mean value or median value. Based on mean value of caused damage, the mentioned statement is most likely true, as is the following: More than 99% of humans have more arms than the average human.

[@user-wu5tr6kg1b]

what abt ton-618's event horison, it has a definite barrier with all of its contents confined to one space, although the thing generating the gravitational pull is theroretically infinitely small, could we count it as a definable object due to its definite boundary? Also isnt the biggest star Stephenson 2-18?

[@dragonbeast6076]

thats what i was thinking

[@rinnegone377]

Maybe they were shooting this video before the discovery of stephenson 218, but still even the largest known star is not as big as the biggest supermassive black hole

[@agoosemanoose]

Thought he said somin else at 0:51👀

[@hamdan1390]

Ong he did that on purpose bro😭😭

[@Andy5834]

The given radius of the electron at 11:25 is not correlated to the actual occupied space of an electron, but a calculation from classical physics.

[@bertilhatt]

There’s a fourth central tendency: it’s called (the local equivalent of) “medial” in some languages. It’s a version of the median weighted by the quantity you are looking at. Say for salaries: it’s the value where people above it earn as much as those below it. There are subdivisions called (the local equivalent of) "quantales," say “quintales” if you split into five groups of an equal total amount.

[@Cyborg_of_Nature]

I love this channel and been watching for years but cmon mate, you need to tell us where you got that standard distribution prop at 1:08 xD

[@TheOneMaddin]

It is absolutely possible for 90% of drivers to be better than the average. Its most likely not the case, but that's not a problem with the math. Eg, if 9 out of 10 people are 5star drivers, and the others are not, then the average is below 5stars, and 90% are above it. You probably meant median tho.

[@EpicMathTime]

The study he referenced was about the arithmetic mean, so he's just wrong either way. I see this "math thing" repeated more than any other. Internet fake math like "most can't be above average!" or "Pi contains every sequence of numbers!" should not be referenced by educational channels..

[@TheOneMaddin]

@@EpicMathTime I couldn't agree more with you. That's the fine difference between channels that are about the actual science vs the ones that are only about the flashiness and the wows.

[@VicJang]

Awesome video. Thanks for making it! By the way, I noticed someone saying that quarks actually have zero size. I haven’t looked into it further so I’m not sure which is true. It would be nice if this part was discussed further. Do quarks really have zero size?

[@HunterHogan]

AUDIO ENGINEER: hi. The mix down is perfect. Joe's voice is exceptionally clean. A tiny observation about the music. Around 14:06, for example, the music includes a bell sound that is probably way too close to 2000 Hz. When I have headphones on and that sound plays, I look around for a microwave that has finished cooking or someone else's phone receiving chat messages but it takes me awhile to figure out that its coming from inside the -house- video. Perhaps find the range for that sound and compress -6.02dB? just that range. Well, FYI.

[@CaoticoFanegasO_o]

Being average isn't bad. Everyone is average, you are unique in so many ways as everyone else. Don't think of yourself as a point in a line, you stand out on many other dimensions. Learn to value those peaks as you understand other people's.

[@your_average_joe5781]

Right ✅

[@4thalt]

6:22 So close to π people.

[@Shreyash112]

😂

[@UMosNyu]

While I agree about the driver survey, it can work out. If you have 100 people with numbers and 83 people have the number 1 (good driver) , while the remaining 17 have the number 1000 (very bad driver), the mean would be above 1 meaning 83 are better then average.

[@jamesbrowne1004]

You left out logmean. As someone who collects environmental data, virtually all of my data sets have log normal distributions. This is when the data is skewed but the logs of the values have a normal distribution. Fun fact: the exponential of the log mean is typically close to the median. Try this with incomes, one common measurement that follows this pattern.

[@frasercain]

I love that you went with UY Scuti instead of a galaxy cluster. Although they're influenced by mutual gravity, the expansive force of dark energy is tearing them apart, and they'll never actually join into a Voltron-style supergalaxy. The Local Group is bound by gravity and will eventually merge together. It measures about 2.4 million light-years or 2.3^22 meters. That would add another 9 orders of magnitude. Which gets us about 9,000 meters on average, which is roughly... the diameter of the Earth. In other words... the entire Earth is average.

[@GiornoJovani]

0:00: 😊 The video discusses the concept of being average and challenges the idea that being average is a negative thing. 3:27: 📊 Different ways to measure central tendency: average, mode, and median. 7:53: 📏 Size is a matter of perspective and can be measured using SI units. 11:01: 🔬 Atoms are composed of subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons, but there are even smaller particles like bosons. 14:28: 🌟 The video discusses the sizes of different celestial objects, from the largest star UY Scuti to the smallest particle, the quark. Recap by Tammy AI

[@edwardsimpson119]

10:02 This is a good definition of *a* thing, not to be confused with *The* Thing, who is the big, orange rocky hero in The Fantastic Four.

[@colinburgess7728]

great video. thanks

[@silviavalentine3812]

3:49 we can fix that 😉🔪

[@benjamintheidiot]

awesome answer!

[@silviavalentine3812]

@@benjamintheidiot should be an obvious solution to most but noooo :(

[@BDupp2]

Regardless of the law you should have a moral obligation to not murder

[@mediumrarechickenbreast]

I LOVE YOUR VOICE OMG

[@troliskimosko]

Excellent 90s basketball narrative pushing Joe 💯👍👍

[@pgc6290]

The fact that average is in the 20s is very scary. I want the average to be in 40s atleast.

[@ideallyyours]

it's easier to make new people than to stop old people from dying, I guess

[@sketchups4672]

It's probably going to go up with the ageing population problem occurring. Ideally you want the average lower than higher

[@hjuy4049]

Why is it scary

[@ninjaguysith]

@@hjuy4049 Ageism. Some ignorant old people like to blame problems of the world on younger people, which makes no sense. Trees take time to grow and so do problems.

[@hjuy4049]

@@ninjaguysith That is very silly

[@maggusmaggistar7534]

15:15 u should have said "ur pp"

[@kepspark3362]

I found this so inspiring!!! I was so excited throughout all the video!! Thanks a lot, making me aware of the universe 1ce again, I sometimes get so small minded. This is the sort of stuff I wanna be constantly surrounded with, being reminded of.

[@joshuaclarke366]

Figuring out what a “thing” is is so important tho lowkey that’s part of why we have so much trouble deciding how to measure them… and philosophers try to answer that bc it helps us understand why we attribute “thing-ness” to some “things” and not others. Like from your last video: if words are “things” then it makes sense why we’re able to identify their properties (letters) simultaneously and much more efficiently than we could with no higher order “thing”. Your definition of a thing: “an organized structure made of matter and held together by a fundamental force” was interesting to me as a philosophy student. Hume calls the “mind” a “bundle” made up of perceptions and ideas, pulled together by two main “principles of association”: 1. Resemblance 2. Cause and Effect he also calls them “gentle forces”, saying they are responsible for how certain perceptions and ideas are “attracted” to one another. But even he doesn’t think the “mind” is a “thing” at all. In his words, the mind’s unity identity is not “real”, it is “felt”. Maybe ideas are somehow able to organize themselves subjectively (or abstractly) to solve a problem that dealing in reality wouldn’t be able to solve. Might actually link back to your video on dreams and reading. Both show the brain using a similar strategy for organizing the world’s inputs by separating “homeostatic property clusters” (things where all the properties are mutually-promoting), or “things” In true philosopher fashion feels like I got somewhere but also just circled the issue by articulating what I meant in different ways. Think there’s a utility to it but philosophy is definitely a frustrating way of trying to solve problems. Especially like “what is the most average thing”. Thanks for the video made me think and I agree wit your definition of thing

[@sachamm]

1:20 While it's extremely _unlikely_, it is definitely not impossible that 93% of people are better than average drivers. Imagine a population of 100 drivers and skill levels ranging from 1 to 10. If 93 people are skill level 6, and 7 people are skill level 1, then 93% of the population are above average. Edited for basic arithmetic lol

[@jasonhoffarth]

untrue, because then the average wouldbe in the 6-7 range given that 93% of people are 6s or 7s. 5 isnt always average

[@sachamm]

@@jasonhoffarth 93 are skill level 6 7 are skill level 1 The average would be something like 5.95. I added a comma, hopefully that will make it more obvious!

[@EpicMathTime]

​@@jasonhoffarthThe average is in the 1-6 range, which is _less than 6,_ and 93% of people have skill level 6, so 93% of people are above average. The example couldn't be simpler. It should be immediately obvious.

[@Yonkage-ik5qb]

I would safely say that about 7% of people are really really terrible at driving because they are either just learning how to drive or are very old and shouldn't be anymore. But really, when people say they are "better than average", the mean "better than the average driver", not "better than the averaged aggregate skill level of all drivers". Mathematically, what the mean is probably closer to the definition of median.

[@Dra3oon]

I think average refers to the mode or median driver rather than the mean here though

[@I.I.I.A2]

0:34 His name must be muhammad lee

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

steven he:he's a FAILURE!

[@bbbenj]

Interesting point of view!

[@pauls5745]

I love statistics and graph everything I can. seeing how values change across the data is usually better than knowing a middle value

[@markmurex6559]

Oh- knitter. I heard something else.

[@RFdaniel]

“I’m also a below average ni**er” Say what now?

[@give-me-guts-to-accept-truth]

As always, just got the answer of a question which I have never asked . Love you joe ❤❤❤❤

[@your_average_joe5781]

Thanks

[@ivovanroij]

Great job average Joe! Thanks for the cool explanation!

[@your_average_joe5781]

Your welcome 😁

[@tomsko863]

This was a great video. Way above average.

[@fishstix4209]

4:09 that team was next level stacked and everyone just seemed to click as a collective flex to the world.

[@Wowreally42]

Being 6’7 and having a size 17 shoe, it’s glaringly obvious that things are made for the average 😂

[@inferiority_complex_7926]

8:00 "Size is all a matter of perspective" now I know how to answer HER question

[@infinityman5592]

Finally

[@mellissadalby1402]

Good stuff Dr. Joe. Honestly, the way waves (pick any type, gavitation, B-fields, H-fields, etc.) propagate and the way the galactic filaments look totally remind me of structures in the human brain. How do we know that our universe is not one gigantic brain that we are too small to comprehend the existence of and coupld not possibly understand?

[@jaybingham3711]

Because it reminds me of a sponge. Or a bush. Or a spider web. How do know we're not just pictures in a cartoon.

[@leonardofontenelle3560]

Hi there, epidemiologist here. We can also estimate the median and even the mode from a representative sample, although the central theory limit makes it easier to estimate the arithmetic mean.

[@TheDanEdwards]

The median thing *in the universe* is the Cosmic Microwave Background. It's also the mode. And probably the average (ignoring virtual particles.) The CMB is everywhere, you're swimming in it right now. You're immersed in neutrinos too, but there are even more CMB photons in the universe.

[@stevejackson2471]

"Size is all a matter of perspective" - Joe 2023

[@saadbhatti6437]

And now I'm having a average pp crisis

[@arjunvadrevu]

I was not expecting that motivational tidbit at the end but I love it

[@owenernst7768]

15:49 the answer is wasps when I am enjoying food in my garden during summer

[@lorenzoplaserrano8734]

this is good ❤❤❤

[@Livic091]

Thank you.

[@kuzan25]

“Size is all a matter of perspective”

[@Celis.C]

Another excellent video, as always. ... But with that in mind. If we'd pile up all Be Smart videos, this one would probably just be ... pretty mid?

[@carlsoll]

14:32 Diameter of 2.4 Trillion Meters, it’s ‘crust’ would be at Jupiters orbit - Dear god. Image if it went supernova O.O

[@Blazer1408]

The bit about "straight out of dance class" just broke me. I was on the floor laughing for about 20 mins

[@thejonjon5000]

I was doing the dishes when you said “I’m also a below average knitter”… stopped dead then saw the picture and had to go sit down for a minute 😅😂 also it gave me hiccups