How "average" is often very misleading----- People paid to manipulate readers

[Atticus]

with words often use the term to essentially lie to us while being "technically correct".

For example if you and 131 others in your tax bracket were in a room with Elon Musk, it would be technically correct to report that the "average" wealth of those in the room was "over 2 billion dollars", but would that not be ridiculously deceptive? Mr. Musk's net worth is 266 billion dollars and that certainly "skews" the average, does it not?

Another example: imagine that you have one of your feet in each of two buckets of water. The "average" water temperature in the buckets is 122 degrees. That may sound comfy until I tell you the temperature of the water in one bucket is 32 degrees (freezing) while the other is 212 degrees (boiling). It may be technically correct to state that 122 degree "average", but I doubt you'd want a foot in either bucket.

"Figures can lie because liars can figure".

[jimfields33]

1. That's how statistics work

Yes pesky math is annoying but factual.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. Hence, In Economics & Finance...

...the median is a more useful value.
The median household income is a far more useful indicator of local economic potential than an average.
There are about 30 people in our town of 6,000 that skew the average. (In our case, by only around $20. A few of them skew it by MUCH more.)
But we don't appreciably skew the median.

[kcr]

5. That doesn't mean it can't be misleading

It is misleading to use the average, when the median presents a more accurate picture, because it skews perception.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

2. Pretty sure the average wealth would be $1B, not $2B but maybe my math is rusty ...

Or maybe the others in the room are also quite rich

Anyways, yeah. Sometimes averages (and means and medians) are purposefully used deceptively.

Sometimes they're inherently deceptive (typically due to the unstated standard deviation being large, thus creating a large confidence interval, as would be the case in both your scenarios) but the entity presenting the data doesn't understand why themselves, or perhaps assumes a greater level of understanding among their readers than is appropriate.

[cloudbase]

4. It's the same mistake some folks make when they say

that half the people are below average intelligence.