[DBrow]

“Remember, in any population, 50% are less intelligent than the average.”

50% are less intelligent than the median- the average (mean) can be different from the median.

If you have 10,20,20,20,50,80,100,100, the average is 50 and the median is 35, so half are higher than 35 and half lower.

[reg45]

Ok! Ok! You are technically correct. I should have used proper terminology - after all this is Free Republic, not The Daily Kos (where the population is highly skewed towards the lowest quartile of the bell curve).

However, in a normally distributed population, the mean (average), the median, and the mode are the same value.

BTW, when I think of nooses, I associate them with "Hang 'Em High", "The Oxbow Incident", and "Judgment at Nuremberg".