# What we miss when we focus on the average

- Institution: TED
- Department: Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi
- Speaker: Mona Chalabi
- Year: 2021
- Level: For everyone
- Language: English
- Subjects: Mathematics
- Source: [TED](https://www.ted.com/talks/mona_chalabi_what_we_miss_when_we_focus_on_the_average)
- Licence: [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) (Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions.)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

It's tempting to focus on averages when we think about data, but the world is a lot messier than those numbers can make it out to be. So what could we gain if we shifted our attention to the outliers in the data, or as data journalist Mona Chalabi likes to call them, the lost birds? Want to hear more from Mona? Check out her podcast Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi, from the TED Audio Collective.

## Lectures

1. [What we miss when we focus on the average](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/ted/mona_chalabi_what_we_miss_when_we_focus_on_the_average/c31246df5ca2), 4 min (TED's player)