The chances are if you are reading this, you are not average. You are probably above average. According to Time the average American reads 19 minutes a day! I have no reason to think that this is any different for any other western country. Even discounting that. If you are reading this, you probably have a degree and have an interest in computer science or analytics; since many of the topics I will write about it will be on those topics.

Have you considered what is required to obtain a degree? Or even the colleagues who you work with; what is their level of intelligence?

Consider ATAR, which is the system currently used in New South Wales for university admission scores. ATAR is a system which is based on percentile. If you get 50 ATAR, you are approximately better than 50% of your cohort which you began school with. (Note that the median score for test-takers is in the 65-70 ATAR range). To get a university degree at UNSW in a STEM field you would need a minimum of 80 ATAR. That is you would be in the top 20 percentile of your cohort already!

This post is not to disparage other universities, degrees. It is merely here to highlight how warped our concept of average (and normality) is.

Fake it till you make it

When we grow up and become adults we intrinsically try very hard to mask any sign that we just don’t know the solution. Saying “I don’t know” is met with confused looks and even doubts of your level of intelligence; even though it could very well be the honest and most correct answer at that time. Instead we’re restricted to making half-truths for topics where truth doesn’t even matter. They could be things as innocent as “How’s it going?”, or maybe another question which seems to be fairly common as a twenty-something “Do you like your job?”.

There is the expectation that we give the same canned response and not probe any further. Yet upon actually probing further there appears to be a segment of twenty-somethings which are disillusioned about their career direction. This isn’t really all that surprising. Our perception of a career is often quite different to what actually happens in the real world - just like expecting a young child whose diet subsided entirely of chicken nuggets to appreciate fine dining, careers is an experience which should be lived upon not merely dreamed and acted on. It shouldn’t surprised anyone when young people decide to change careers simply because their expectations did not match reality.

Biased Sampling and Success

Stupid questions can often reflect truths which we are generally quite ignorant of. For example:

Why should I expect a 25 year old teacher to be paid less than a 25 year old lawyer?

One could come up with many reasons, with the one (possibly incorrect) being that it is more difficult to become a lawyer than a teacher, hence the supply is restricted and the expected income would be higher. Yet in my experience, we fail to accept “cut-throat” occupations with high failure rates and high respective incomes with the understanding that those who made it through would probably be successful in most other fields in which they decided to pursue, as such our perception of average is skewed.