Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference

by William MacAskill

We’re used to thinking of what’s typical and what’s average as being the same. For example if you measured the height of all women in North America and plotted those heights on a graph, the result would be something like Figure 7. The height of a typical woman in North America (that is, a woman who is taller than 50% of people and shorter than 50% of people) is 5 feet 5 inches; the height of the average woman (which is equal to the total height of all women divided by the number of women) is also 5 feet 5 inches. In the case of height, what is typical and what is average is the same. This sort of distribution is what we’re most familiar with, so it’s aptly called a normal distribution.