Ratios

How does the ratio between mean and median vary in actuallity? I know how the two are worked out I'm just wondering whether it makes a difference.

I'm a relatively unobscure user with 203/716, despite having 4% of my library shared with only 1 other user and 7.5% solely held by me.

My ratio is hence 0.28 median to mean.
How much variation is there?

I don't have an answer to your question - math makes my brain hurt; however, I was curious how my 69/299 obsurity rating was in comparison to the average. What IS the average?

#2 your ratio is the median divided by the mean which equals 0.23

From Zeitgeist there are 11632503 books and 1,795,398 works held by 168651 people, so if everything was distributed evenly each person would have 69 books each shared with 6 other people and the median and the mean would be the same (6), with a ratio of 1.

However "if everything was distributed evenly" is a vast assumption.

Maybe if we get a few more posts we'll be able to work out the average of those users who respond to a question in the obscure group.

So um... *blush*

Does that mean I'm more or less obscure than the average?

I don't consider myself very obscure but my median/mean is 49/439 = .11, I have lots of books under 10 shared and 7 of the top 10 shared books here.

#4. We don't know what the average is yet!

your Library is more obscure than mine, less obscure than readafew's and considerably less obscure than the "if everything was shared out equally" which has figures of 6/6.

It's gotta be all my hubby's Star Trek novels. Blech.

#7 sort by shared I think you'll find it isn't! there's no star Trek in the first 150 of your most shared works I got bored after that, but was down to less than 1000 shared..... and 4 copies of Stranger in a strange land at 2500 owners each doesn't help!

I meant the reason it was as obscure as it is due to my hubby's collection.

My Obscurity has been plummeting into the "common" depths of late ... I'm currently at 17/268 (a .06 ratio) down from the 12/189 at the end of 2006, and way off from my old 3/36 back in the early days of L.T.!

Dear Reading Fox,
A high mean can come about by having lots of Harry Potter books, even though most of your library is obscure. The median might be 10, and the mean might be 800, if you own only extremely popular and extremely unpopular works. But if you own mostly middle range books, you might end up having a mean of 600 and a median of 400, because you don't have Harry Potter, and you don't have rare titles either.
Mine is something like 7/165. This is due to having a lot of old books which few seem to have, plus unocmmon type collections, like older travel guides, railroad material, Episcopal Church. My wife has Myrtle Reed books, for instance, plus some Barbie books.
-- Bob Campbell

I know theoretically that a very wide range of median to mean ratios is possible. I was curious to see if that range was actually represented in LT. Look like it is 0.04 - 0.28 so far.

(sigh)

I gotta quit reading "popular" books ... in the past month I've slipped to a .07 ratio with 18/269!

So fun-statistics show 1/391... that means I have a ratio of 0,002.... Probably because of all the Chinese books...

#13

Just start deleting those "popular" books. And if you pick up something "popular" in future, just forget to catalogue it. I won't tell...

29/354, or 0.082

Four Harry Potters at one end, and about 450 unshared books at the other. It would be tempting to give away the HP's to a deserving child...

101/581 = .17 (with a library size of 536 if that makes a difference)

24 books shared with no one else (mostly old college textbooks and a few books on sailing) and 13 with one other. Interestingly, I share more books with 2 other people than with 1. Here's the number of books I share with others starting with 0:

24, 13, 18, 12, 6, 9, 12, 9, 7, 7, 3, 5, 0, 7, 5, 4, 2, 4, 4, 3, 5, 5, 2, 7, 2, 3, 1, 3, 4, 1.....

and my most popular book is The Hobbit shared with 14042 others.

I've been adding my Comics collection in and currently my numbers have gone down to 18/438 with 1102 books. I still have about 800 comics to go. my ratio is .041. I also have 7 of the 10 most popular books with another one on the way.