[Fai Mao]

“On a stellar scale, it’s really quite average — about half of the known stars are larger; half are smaller.”

Misleading statement.

If you take, for example the weight of all adult humans from the very small to the hugely fat the range is about 65 pounds (Very tiny women, pigmies) to 850 pounds for the fattest guy alive. Half of that, (which is how they get this stat) is is just over 400 pounds. There are not many 400+ pound people walking around.

Our star is actually in like the 75th percentile of star size. Or that is what the astronomy professor in that class I took in university all those years ago said.

[samiam5]

“Our star is actually in like the 75th percentile of star size. Or that is what the astronomy professor in that class I took in university all those years ago said.”

You just don’t know how much has changed since then...

[jmacusa]

Our star is rather a common, garden variety sized star. Nothing too big, not to small. I was under impression Betelgeuse was the biggest star.

[BitWielder1]

The difference between "average" and "median" is often ignored.
There are many more small stars than large and the small stars are not very luminous, so it's hard to get a reliable count.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Or that is what the astronomy professor in that class I took in university all those years ago said.

I believe that astronomers have since concluded that most stars are probably dim red dwarfs, whose detectability falls off sharply with distance. So star demographics have shifted.

[norwaypinesavage]

What you described is not how a statistical average is calculated. True average is calculated by adding the values for EVERY item in the group, and then dividing by the number of items in the group. This gives a much different result, and makes the statement accurate.