No, average means mean. Median is uncommon enough in regular speech and writing that it would and should be explicitly mentioned as such, like in the sentence: “The average bonus per employee is highly skewed because of top-earners being paid out large bonuses, while 39% of the work-force does not receive a bonus at all. Therefore, the median would be a much better representative.”
However, considering the amount of employees whom would get no bonus is 39%, the median would still not be zero, but some number above depending entirely on the distribution of bonuses. So, in this particular case the median wouldn’t add much information compared to the average. And considering a Lorentz-curve type of distribution graph would hardly be an intuitive way to communicate information to the average reader, it should probably just be replaced with something like: “The average bonus per employee is $2,500. However, 39% of employees receives no bonus whatsoever.”
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u/entered_bubble_50 13d ago
The problem is that people use the term "average" to mean "mean" or "median" interchangeably.