“That’s why when you read an announcement by a corporation executive or a business proprietor that the average pay of the people who work in his establishment is so much, the figure may mean something and it may not. If the average is a median, you can learn something significant from it: Half the employees make more than that; half make less. But if it is a mean (and believe me it may be that if its nature is unspecified) you may be getting nothing more revealing than the average of one $45,000 income—the proprietor’s—and the salaries of a crew of underpaid workers. “Average annual pay of $5,700” may conceal both the $2,000 salaries and the owner’s profits taken in the form of a whopping salary.”