← The Arithmetic of a Feed · Lesson 1 of 3
The long tail
Attention is spread very unevenly: a few posts get most of the views, and most get very few. When numbers are skewed like this, the average sits far above the typical value.
Picture ten posts, nine with 10 views and one with 910. The mean is 100 views; the median, the middle post, is 10. Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions.
Five posts get 2, 3, 3, 4 and 88 likes. Which number describes a typical post best?
A lesson is kept once you've answered the question and written at least 8 words. Nobody grades it; it stays on this device.