$100 000. One hundred THOUSAND Canadian dollars. The supposed “average” salary Ontario teachers make a year.
Reported source? “The government.”
Let’s Talk About Averages
Suppose five people are at a bar, each earning a salary of $35k a year. Undisputedly, the average salary (by all counts) of the group would be $35k. Typically, when we hear the word average, we equate it with the mean, which is the sum of all the points in a data set, and divided by the total number of values within the set.
Suppose Bill Gates walks into the bar, with a salary of $1 billion a year, bringing the average (mean) salary to $160 million. The reported figure, while still accurate, is not a fair representation of the average earnings of the majority of individuals in the group.
Statement 1: “99% of statistics are made up” (Ha!)
Statement 2: “I have here in my hand a list of 205 — a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department” – Joseph McCarthy, a US previous senator (1950)
Don’t these it seem to bring credibility to whatever claim the person or organization is trying to assert? The first statement is, of course, made up. As for the second statement, it turns out that the paper had no names on it at all. Statistics is a tool that helps us bring meaning to data, but can be abused for nefarious purposes if wielded irresponsibly.
We should be cautious
So, back to the this 100k salary I’m supposed to be making… How did they get this data? What are the demographics of the teachers being surveyed? (It makes a difference if the majority of teachers who have been working full time in Ontario have at least 15 years of experience under their belt). Are they including retired teachers? Teachers who have recently been laid off?
I tried to trace the origins of where this figure of 100k came from. After a bit of digging, I think its likely that my mother mis-reported the figure she heard from sources that gave out misinformation.
[NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I purchased Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan many years ago, thinking its an important book to add to any Math Teacher’s arsenal (and it is!) but had only gotten through the first three chapters before dismissing it for another read. It is not a boring book – quite the opposite in fact – but I felt that mere passive reading was not enough for me to really retain the important ideas and intuition that Wheelan is trying to impart to his readers. This time, I’m giving it another chance and plan to summarize material I am learning, relate it to my own experiences, and share that learning here on my blog.]