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?
Which is exactly why any reasonable person would look at the median rather than the mean. I also think you are greatly overestimating how many avid readers there are. If one in ten people reads a book every month (which seems very unlikely), that still only amounts to 1.2 books/year on average from them.
The median is just as skewed a piece of data with how many people don’t read at all. If 51% of people don’t read at all, the median is zero. If you want to know something interesting, you want the percentage of people who read books, and then the mean books read a year among those who do read.
Why? This is not some great divide where 50%+1 read no books and 50%-1 read a book per week. If you want interesting information with details you’ll look at distributions and historical trends and so on but if you are only looking at 1 or 2 numbers, you’ll get limited info.