How Average Are You?
How do you think you compare to others? That’s the question posed by the ThanAverage website in what it calls a “small unscientific investigation into how we value and compare ourselves to each other.” It prompts:
Imagine you are in a room with 100 strangers. Imagine they’re similar to your peers and neighbours. Based solely on your own instinct, perceptions, and self-reflection, answer the following questions.
For each question, you click a button to indicate how you think you compare to the average: do you use social media less, are you more punctual, do you have better dental hygiene, are you more humble, and so on. The site presents 95 questions in random order (and welcomes suggestions for more). Response rates are robust, ranging from approximately 16,000 for newer questions to over 40,000 for those that have been in place longer.
Most amusing was the classic, “Are you a better driver than average?” When I answered it (above average, of course), the ThanAverage audience revealed itself to be far more self-aware than average, with precisely 50% of respondents claiming to be above average. Perhaps they are aware of other studies showing that up to 80% of people claim to be above-average drivers, which triggers Dave Barry’s quote: “The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above-average drivers.”
Our Do You Use It? polls have long revealed how self-selection influences survey results. I’ve always believed that, like the children of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon, TidBITS readers are all above average, and now you can quantify that for yourself at ThanAverage. Or at least get an opportunity to reflect on polling weaknesses and psychological biases. Hat tip to Recommendo for the link.
To some (perhaps large) extent, I believe this is because each driver has his or her own belief system about what makes a good driver. The person who swerved in front of me on the interstate with four lanes going my direction might think that a good driver can judge clearance well. (I haven’t believed this for many years, but since getting a vehicle with adaptive cruise control that I cannot turn off, I really don’t believe it.) Someone else might think that a good driver uses or doesn’t need to use turn signals. And many people seem to have different opinions about how much faster than the posted speed limit the traffic should go. “Everyone who drives faster than I do is a maniac; everyone who drives slower than I is a moron.” An acquaintance claimed to be a really good driver and the two accident he/she had been involved in were the other drivers’ faults. I failed to make a good impression when I observed that a really good driver might have avoided the other drivers. (At least I didn’t say “the other really good drivers.”)
@Will_M has a really good point which dovetails with my view. What the heck is an “average driver”?
This is not a problem of statistics (where more than 50% of a population can be above average*) but one of perception. The same applies to the majority of questions I encountered on that site.
*AVERAGE(1,44,55) = 33.333
The word “average” means different things to different people.
Your example is the arithmetic mean, and you’re 100% correct in that context. Outliers can shift the mean such that a clear majority of samples are above or below it.
But I suspect that in the context of these kinds of questions, most people are treating it as the median, which is, by definition, the point at which half of the samples fall on either side.
Nevertheless, you’re right that this is a matter of perception, not reality. We don’t actually know what the whole population is really like, and our impressions of others are always relative to ourselves.
What make and model is that? As a semi-reformed backseat driver, I would be extremely nervous driving that car.
The problem is the premise that the 100 strangers are “similar to your peers and neighbors”. First of all, peers and neighbors are different people – well, my peers and neighbors are totally different people. Second, I suspect that people who look at this kind of site, including their peers and neighbors, are probably more educated or otherwise different from the average (global?) citizen, so you get a skew right there.
The first question I got confirmed that: “Are you more or less religious?” – 83% of participants say that they are less religious, which is exactly the opposite of the “average American” (78% of Americans are religious, according to Gallup 2024).
It would be indeed an amazing site if they asked some background questions to benchmark answers to some reference :)
It’s only opposite if one assumes America is the only country being surveyed. It’s a big world out there.
I gave up after about 8 questions - just seemed a bit nonsensical. “Do you dream more than average?” How can you possibly answer something based on how other people dream?
Most of the questions are just subjective opinions (which is of course, imho
).
I want people to go with the mode.
;-)
Yes, totally … one of the many unknown unknowns here …
Gosh! This is a lot of fun! I suggest you have a couple glasses of wine before you do it and don’t stop to ponder. (There’s a lot of questions.)
Except. Remember what average means. You may think you’re duller than average but you’re conditioned by your environment.
Dave
“Average” is such a vague term. But I hate to consider myself average. It sounds very boring. I want to think that I’m unique in my own way.
I gave up after three questions to which I wanted to answer ‘average’. It’s all a bit binary for me, lumping together people who think they are ever so slightly better or worse than average with those who are convinced they are substantially so. I therefore find the results meaningless
It’s a recent Kia, and I expect that the feature exists across the Kia lineup (and I wouldn’t be surprised if many manufacturers do not allow disabling this “safety” feature).
Kia actually warns the customer that the adaptive cruise control can get false returns from a median barrier, and I have experienced that in mountain driving. I’m driving at the speed limit, the road curves somewhat sharply due to the terrain, the sensor notices the median barrier, and the brakes come on.
This is one of the reasons I noted that the site was “an opportunity to reflect on polling weaknesses and psychological biases.” :-)
There are all sorts of others, like the apropos Better-Than-Average Effect, the converse Worse-Than-Average Effect, Selection Bias, and so on. In the end, it’s mostly fun.
I gave up after it offered that 70% of the respondents think they are more progressive than average. This is not a normal sample.
I really don’t want to know.
;~}
And when thinking about a question like this: don’t forget Dunning-Kruger.
It sounds like you’re talking about collision avoidance. Adaptive Cruise Control is the feature where you set a maximum desired speed and the car will automatically slow down as necessary based on the car in front of you.
Very much my, and others’, point. What does your average person believe “average” means? Both definitions are very precise and I think, perhaps, most people wouldn’t give either definition if pressed. Outside of a group of numbers it’s an amorphous concept that just acts as a peg to hang ideas on. Not data.
The problem I found with this site (and why I gave up after a few questions) is that it needs an ‘About Average’ response option. I couldn’t answer some of them because neither ‘worse than’ or ‘better than’ felt right.
Yeah, I ran into that too, although in some of those cases, I found that the percentages suggested a pretty even split, which suggested to me that others were in the same situation.
You’re probably right. This is the first vehicle I’ve had with many “smart” features, and I don’t know the nomenclature. To me, the effect is the same. Whether the median barrier is near because the road is curving sharply or someone pulls in front of me, the vehicle slams on the brakes. I understand this could be collision avoidance in both cases.
What is definitely (I think) the adaptive cruise control is when my vehicle overtakes a vehicle in the same lane. My vehicle will not slow down, as in easing off the gas, until it decides that it needs to slam on the brakes. Since it slams on the brakes in this situation, I extrapolated to the median barrier or car pulling in situation.
That sounds like automatic braking. There usually isn’t a way to turn that off, as it’s a safety feature. I agree it can be abrupt when it kicks in (i.e. it slams the brakes). It usually only works at low speeds (20mph or less, for example).
I often encounter it when the car in front of me turns off the road into a driveway or another road. It will slow down to do that and its backside is sticking out in my road slightly, but it’s not stopped. It’s moving and turning out of the way. I would slow but not brake, but auto-braking will slam on the brakes even though I’m nowhere near clipping the other car. It “sees” the other car even when it’s outside of my lane. Very annoying!
But I have had a few times when cars in front of me stopped unexpectedly and I didn’t realize soon enough, but my car automatically stopped, which saved a potential collision. So it can be useful!
Tee hee! As I said earlier, it’s best to try this “survey” with a glass of wine in hand.
First, it’s a self-selected survey (they did not request you to join it or offer a fee in recompense). So, the “survey” is surveying people with internet connections, people who read sites with recommendations for fun things to do, and people who delight in taking surveys and just happened upon it.
Second, it’s sneaky. It’s not grading you on whether you are above or below average, it’s reporting your and thousands of others opinion of whether you or they thought they were above or below average.
So, it’s showing you how you and a mostly random selection of people feel about yourselves. It is not showing you how you compare to a statistically correct view of the global population.
That said, it is fun to do it (and you should try it again if you blew it off) because you get a faint dopamine rush when you decide that you are above average and another one when you sturdily admit that you’re below average thereby showing your integrity.
Like I said, it’s fun!
Dave
Couldn’t agree more. The site creates false dichotomies by denying the participant the right to respond, “Pretty much somewhere in the middle, I guess.”
There no modern “feature” in motor vehicles that can’t be disabled by a friendly and willing auto mechanic with a pair of wire cutters.
I purchased a VW Beetle (you know, the one that came after the New Beetle, SMH) ten years ago, and while waiting for the car to be delivered, discovered though online videos that the Beetle came equipped with VW’s “Soundaktor,” a “feature” which makes loud vroom, vroom noises that can be heard inside the care (at least) when the quiet engine and excellent firewall soundproofing would otherwise prevent it. Since I abhor vehicles that are noisier than necessary to alert nearby pedestrians to my proximity, when the call finally came from the dealership that they expected delivery to them in a week or so, I told them, “Great, but I’m not signing anything or paying for it until the Soundaktor is permanently disabled.” They were decent enough to demonstrate that it had been done before I signed the paperwork.
Hmm. I can (and do) turn mine off in my Honda Accord.
Years ago, my dad created a cartoon character called “Mediocre Man” who was just okay! (“Can leap tall curbs with a single bound!”) He helped me understand that I may be exceptional in a few ways, but I’m certainly below average in others, and just average in most ways. I realize now how shocking a perspective that is, in a culture that seems to say we all have to be great all the time.