First: I wanna clarify this. I know that loads of people read like 100 books a year, or read all the time. I know these people exist. I’m asking about people that are like… average. An average american who just… reads. Doesn’t track everything or sets goals of like 100, or never stops reading… Anyway, I’ve been searching this up, and i find answers like 15-50, even 100. I find this highly unlikely, especially for average US citizens. Half the people i know don’t even pick up 5 books a year, let alone 15! I just don’t believe these stats. I read somewhere that people read 8 a month on average? That can’t be right for an average person. That’s like 2 books a week… I know people do read this much, but still… For an average person? So be real… how many books do people actually read a year?
The true median is probably lower than the average. Because the people who DO read, read voraciously. If 1 person reads 0 books, and another reads 30, the average is 15. But that doesn’t mean both people actually read 15 books a year. So I think removing the outliers, the “average American” probably reads 1 book a year if that.
The median has to be lower than the average for “books read” because of that skew (and because there is no such thing as reading a negative amount of books).
It’s been beat to death, but people really want the median here. You’d line up every American from least books read to most books read. That 150MM person will have 50% of Americans who read more the prev year and 50% who read less. How many did that person read?
Like you I would assume it’s 0 or 1, but apparently someone linked a survey saying it was 4. Regardless that’s the number people are curious about.
The mean basically only would give the info of how many books were read in America along with how many people are in America (which we already know). It’s pretty meaningless at an individual level.
Aren’t statistics fun