Posted in News/Info, QOTD on 05/09/2006 10:00 pm by enjanerd
Read an article recently which referred to the Wage Project, which was what got me all riled up about my salary a few months back. That led me to finding a newer, better job. And now I take another look and 6 months later, I am again 20% below average. How is that possible? Who are these people who are getting paid that much? I think their numbers might be a little off. But maybe that’s just me making myself feel better about my negotiating skills.
QOTD: “We must delete deceased members from the list of members that owe dues.”
Posted in Rants/Raves on 05/09/2006 08:17 am by enjanerd
Ok, so my whole “America as a skewed bell curve” argument was wrong. Well, not wrong. Just way more skewed than I thought. So, I take back my previous rant. Apparently it is completely irrational for me to think that 1990s size 8 people would still exist in significant enough numbers in the future, that their clothing demands would be reflected in stores.
According to the American Obesity Assoication*:
Currently, 64.5 percent of U.S. adults, age 20 years and older, are overweight and 30.5 percent are obese. Severe obesity prevalence is now 4.7 percent, up from 2.9 percent reported in the 1988 - 1994 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A pamphlet by Pfizer* reported that “only 34% [of American adults] are classified as normal weight.”
Only about 3 percent of Americans are underweight today.*
And, apparently, standard deviation is not an appropriate measure to use on a skewed distribution. I would also need to know the kurtosis to properly evaluate the distribution. In any case, if 90-95% of the population has a BMI over 20, it really isn’t economically beneficial to continue producing clothes for people on the lower end of “normal.”
*All of these refer to 2000 data as current.
