Tynwald members get pay rise

[P.K.]

1 minute ago, CrazyDave said:

Without going into detail I know someone who has had a lot of help with an issue from his own MHK lately.

My friend works normal office hours.  Every phone call and meeting with his MHK has been out of normal hours.

Just saying.

So do I.

Sadly decent MHK's not in it for themselves are very much in the minority...

I still maintain that if I could work out the hourly rate it would be obscene.

And as for MLC's, well...

[asitis]

I would pay more for some to stand up and challenge comin and the CS.

Some of course I wouldn't pay in buckets of horseshit.

[Banker]

19 minutes ago, asitis said:

I would pay more for some to stand up and challenge comin and the CS.

Some of course I wouldn't pay in buckets of horseshit.

Stand yourself then

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, The Voice of Reason said:

This may also help:-

While the mean is the average of all the data values, the median is the "average" of just the one or two observations in the very middle of the data. Thus, in situations where there are no extreme observations, the median is often less accurate than the mean.

That's simply not true - or rather it's meaningless.  The mode and the median do different jobs in describing the data and one isn't more 'accurate' that the other unless you've made a mistake in calculating one of them.  In the case of earnings medians are nearly always used throughout the world because they are the 'wage of the average person' when the mean is just the average of all wages.

Consider a case where a firm has 9 workers on £10,000 pa and the owner on £1,010,000 pa.  The mean wage would be £110,000 and from that you could imply everyone was very well paid - but it wouldn't be true.  The median would be £10,000 which would give a better, though still incomplete picture.

[wrighty]

@The Voice of Reason is certainly not The Voice of A-level statistics.

Median is middle value, so in a population, half will be above it, half below it.  As per Roger's example.

Mode is the commonest value.  In Cricket, batsmen have their averages (which is the mean - total number of runs scored divided by the number of times they got out). The modal 'average' for most of them however is 0.

Broadly speaking, a mode is used for categorical data, a median is used for ordinal data, or numerical data that is not normally distributed, and a mean should only be used for numerical, continuous (or data that can be safely considered to be continuous) data that is either normally distributed or can be transformed such that it is normally distributed.

[The Voice of Reason]

11 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

That's simply not true - or rather it's meaningless.  The mode and the median do different jobs in describing the data and one isn't more 'accurate' that the other unless you've made a mistake in calculating one of them.  In the case of earnings medians are nearly always used throughout the world because they are the 'wage of the average person' when the mean is just the average of all wages.

Consider a case where a firm has 9 workers on £10,000 pa and the owner on £1,010,000 pa.  The mean wage would be £110,000 and from that you could imply everyone was very well paid - but it wouldn't be true.  The median would be £10,000 which would give a better, though still incomplete picture.

Yes but this is a situation where there are extreme observations ( see above) so the median would be better to use as you say.

But to go back to the post made by a fool and his money and applying it to this example you couldn’t say exactly half earn less than £10k and exactly half earn more than 10k

That was more my point. 
Maybe a little pedantic I’ll grant you.

[wrighty]

2 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Yes but this is a situation where there are extreme observations ( see above) so the median would be better to use as you say.

But to go back to the post made by a fool and his money and applying it to this example you couldn’t say exactly half earn less than £10k and exactly half earn more than 10k

That was more my point. 
Maybe a little pedantic I’ll grant you.

You're not being pedantic, you're just not understanding.  A median of 35k meaning half of us earn more and half of us earn less is exactly correct.  The wage distribution is likely skewed, which will make the mean salary more than 35k, such that if it were 40k for example, this might be 'the average' but only 40% earned more, and 60% earned less.

[Declan]

15 minutes ago, wrighty said:

@The Voice of Reason is certainly not The Voice of A-level statistics.

 

If mean, median and mode are A-Level statistics I should have done A-Level statistics.

[The Voice of Reason]

11 minutes ago, wrighty said:

You're not being pedantic, you're just not understanding.  A median of 35k meaning half of us earn more and half of us earn less is exactly correct.  The wage distribution is likely skewed, which will make the mean salary more than 35k, such that if it were 40k for example, this might be 'the average' but only 40% earned more, and 60% earned less.

With respect you’re not understanding. 
I have not advocated ,and are not, advocating the use of the mean average over the median  average in these situations.

It appears to me that you are suggesting I am.

Apologies if you’re not

 

Edited November 3, 2023 by The Voice of Reason
Better wording

[asitis]

2 hours ago, Banker said:

Stand yourself then

It's about having been elected, having the courage to challenge others if you don't believe in what they are doing or saying !

If this collective responsibility rubbish, means they all believe in the decisions that have manoeuvred the island into its present position, then we are doomed.

I have never said I'm a politician, nor have I any desire to be one, however, when you put yourself up for election you must truly believe that you have the skill sets necessary to carry out that role, and furthermore you persuade the electorate that you possess those characteristics. The petrol stations used to give away free nodding dogs !

[wrighty]

10 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

With respect you’re not understanding. 
I have not advocated ,and are not, advocating the use of the mean average over the median  average in these situations.

It appears to me that you are suggesting I am.

Apologies if you’re not

 

I'm not sure what you're suggesting.  You called someone out saying he needed to look up what the median meant, when in fact he'd used it perfectly correctly.  You then went on to argue that the mean is sometimes more accurate than the median as the latter is just the average of two values.  It is, but they're the middle two values in an ordered list, so that half are less, and half are more.

So, can you now see that in these arguments, median is exactly the correct use of 'middle value' or 'average'?

[Ringy Rose]

11 hours ago, woolley said:

The result (say 59% to 41% and 41% carries the day) clearly has no legitimacy

Ballots for strike action require a super-majority because, according to the right, a simple majority gives the union no legitimacy.

Can’t have it both ways.

And that’s before we consider whether a simple majority offers suitable protection to minority groups. There’s a reason why Northern Ireland effectively requires a super-majority.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Ringy Rose

[The Voice of Reason]

5 minutes ago, wrighty said:

I'm not sure what you're suggesting.  You called someone out saying he needed to look up what the median meant, when in fact he'd used it perfectly correctly.  You then went on to argue that the mean is sometimes more accurate than the median as the latter is just the average of two values.  It is, but they're the middle two values in an ordered list, so that half are less, and half are more.

So, can you now see that in these arguments, median is exactly the correct use of 'middle value' or 'average'?

That’s not something I’ve disputed. But if it will bring things to a close I’ll say yes

[Stu Peters]

3 hours ago, asitis said:

It's about having been elected, having the courage to challenge others if you don't believe in what they are doing or saying !

If this collective responsibility rubbish, means they all believe in the decisions that have manoeuvred the island into its present position, then we are doomed.

I have never said I'm a politician, nor have I any desire to be one, however, when you put yourself up for election you must truly believe that you have the skill sets necessary to carry out that role, and furthermore you persuade the electorate that you possess those characteristics. The petrol stations used to give away free nodding dogs !

The reforms in 2021 were designed to reduce the ‘block vote’ by reducing the number of MHKs being paid extra to work in departments. So there is very little collective responsibility outside of CoMin now, and even there a Minister is allowed to vote against on a pre-stated position.

There is a presumption that everything government (CoMin) puts forward should be challenged, but my experience over 2 years has been that most of the votes are pretty routine and for things we agree on (sanctions, legislation etc) so if that makes me a nodding dog, so be it. But the only ‘power’ CoMin has over me is to fire me from IOMPO so I’d lose the 5% uplift - which I would be quite happy to lose if it meant voting against something I disagreed with.

[Zarley]

4 hours ago, asitis said:

The petrol stations used to give away free nodding dogs !

Ah, those were the days! Today's nodding dogs cost us millions.