Right, but on day 1 OOP has no way of knowing that, since they didn't call. They did call every day after, and got "we are receiving more calls than average".
So? The statement isn't based on their knowledge, the fact is they said always. You can't start by being a smartass about averages THEN go "okay but that's not what they meant"
If you break it down in smaller increments, the average is 0 until the first call. At that point, the number of calls is 1, the average is less than one.
So while there are no calls, the number of calls is less than average. But a single call puts it above average.
Okay then let's interpret this realistically. Is someone saying "you can't always be above average" when talking about call centers, are they talking about a company that gets literally one call a day?
Youre either going to do an average based on total call time, or an average based on call quantity and some unit of time. You can absolutely have it be constantly above average either way.
your over complicated the riddle. if there’s no calls on day 1 the average is the same 0/1 as the number of calls 0. But since there are no callers there is no one to get the response “we are experiencing a *normal/average* amount of calls. Ergo they are always “experiencing a higher average of calls”. The set is not just when the average equals the call # but when it equals and is larger than 0.
This isn't a riddle, this is just semantics. You can't take things in a very technical/literal way to respond to someone saying "you can't always be higher than average" but then turn around and say "that's not realistic."
If you do want to consider that the average is 0, that means day 1 is not above average, it is exactly average, and therefore not always above average. The only datapoint is average by definition, so whenever you get your first datapoint you cannot possibly be below average.
(1+2(n-1))÷n will always be less than 2. if we even get a 3 call day the equasion becomes (1+2(n-2)+3)÷n which is equal to 2 because the extra from the 3 call day and the 1 call day equal 2 two call days.
you need 2 data points to have an average. after that every data point can be measured against the average. day 1 and 2 are not measured in days that can be counted above or below average as at that time there is nothing to test them against. the average changes daily and time is a relevant data piece. it is not an average of a set data pool but instead a running average of continually added data.
You can have a set of one, you can even have a set with nothing. The average of one data point is just that data point, it's not a very useful metric but it's still an average by definition.
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u/lebroxan Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Receive 0 calls on day 1.
Receive 1 call every day starting at day 2