November 16, 2004

Rob, I am not one who posts a lot of comments, but when I do, they mean I am awestruck. Great post!!!

when i die, my kids will remember me. and i believe with all my heart that they will never remember me as being "hopelessly average"

One standard deviation on either side of the mean encompasses 68% of the test population. There's your "average." To encompass 99.9% of the test population you're looking at 4 standard deviations (or 4 times the standard deviation) on each side of the mean.

Here and here are two pretty good links to explain it.

Once again, it's posts like this that keep me coming back. These type of posts, along with your humorous ones, are what sets you apart as a writer, which is different than a blogger. Well done.

Good post for an average guy. Who helped you with it? j/k
Talk about avg....at HS graduation, got my Diploma along with a class status card showing my rank among my classmates. I WAS 1st in the 3rd quarter, that got scratched out. They moved me to last of the 2nd quarter. I asked and they said that was done every year. and I thought it was because I was special. Just average.

Interesting post, A-man, since I was just writing about this today. We come on stage, do our little bit in the limelight, get the hook, and the next act comes on stage. We might get remembered for a little while, and we live in the memories of those who knew and loved us, but when they are gone, what then?

(and this is without considering afterwards - heaven, hell, reincarnation, whatever)

Perhaps that's why people are so desperate to be in movies and on TV - you might grow old and die, but so long as a bit of film exists and a pair of eyes sees it, you're immortal.

Dawn has never been average, think she was doing a pity party because her boy lost the election.

"Hopelessly average" tends to be one of two things when used in this context. The Michael Moore-esque "I am better than you will ever be" mindset, or the "I am too damn lazy to get off my ass and do something with my life" mindset.

"Average" is relative to a given person's perception of it, and as such attempting to apply it to someone else is usually an attempt at one of the above.

Gee, the "hopelessly average" stuff again... For awhile I used the following .sig file on my emails:

A college student challenged a senior citizen, saying it was impossible for their generation to understand his. "You grew up in a different world," the student said. "Today we have television, jet planes, space travel, nuclear energy, computers..." Taking advantage of a pause in the student's litany, the geezer said, "You're right. We didn't have those things when we were young. So we invented them."

Sing LOUD the praises of the "hopelessly average"; without them to USE the fruits of the few geniuses amongst us, we would still be squatting in caves, wondering where that light in the sky comes from every so often.

There's a few folks out there that know I'm not "hopelessly average".
But, it's sometimes best to lie low.

It could be argued, and I will, that no one is average. On the bell curve of any attribute only the center line representing 50% is average. Since a line has no width people can only be above or below average.