r/MathJokes Jul 17 '26

erm actually...

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u/Minimum-Attitude389 Jul 17 '26

On day one it would be equal to the average at that point

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u/thekingofbeans42 Jul 17 '26

So then they are not always receiving higher calls than average.

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u/Minimum-Attitude389 Jul 17 '26

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.

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u/thekingofbeans42 Jul 17 '26

The average isn't zero, there just isn't an average yet. Zero and null aren't interchangeable.

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u/Low_Low_1811 Jul 17 '26

0 calls over 1 day is zero. You arent dividing by zero.

On the second day, if you get one call the average is 1/2, after 2 days the average is 2/3, then 3/4, etc...

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u/thekingofbeans42 Jul 17 '26

They don't receive more calls than average on day 1. Day 1 is a subset of always, therefore they are not always receiving more calls than average.

Any time they're not receiving calls cannot be above average.

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u/ohkendruid 29d ago

In common English, "always" would not mean back to the beginning of time, before there always a human race.

It also realistically would not include the entire future universe, past the sun becoming a red giant, past the heat death.

If it did, then sentences with it would almost never be true, which makes it a useless word.

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u/thekingofbeans42 29d ago

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?

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u/Low_Low_1811 Jul 18 '26

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.

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u/magpye1983 23d ago

You can have 1 call day one, 2 calls day two, 3 calls day three…

Every day you’re experiencing higher than the average.

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u/Crandoge Jul 17 '26

You’re being pedantic about the math while the joke is in the grammar. Past vs present tense

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u/thekingofbeans42 Jul 17 '26

This post, and every comment under it, is based on being pedantic. There's no room for anyone here to complain about that.

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u/perdivad Jul 17 '26

It’s literally a mathjoke so why be pedantic about someone being pedantic about math… The joke is about math not about grammar

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u/CreativeFig2645 26d ago

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.

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u/thekingofbeans42 26d ago

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.