section 2.2.2, averaging

[michaeladamkatz]

I want to complain a little about:

That said, notice that while we can use the natural ordering of these items to construct sensible groupings, what we can’t do is average them. For instance, in my simple example here, the “average” response to the question is 1.97. If you can tell me what that means I’d love to know, because it seems like gibberish to me!

If we accept the premise that it's meaningful to order the four statements on “the extent to which they agree with the current science” (which is the point of this section) then an average of 1.97 means "on a scale of 1 to 4, 1 being agreement with current science and 4 being disagreement with it, the average response rated 1.97." I wouldn't call that gibberish. In one population I might get an average of 1.2. In another population I might get an average of 3.5. That tells me a lot about those populations.