> Most people have an above-average number of legs.
The arithmetic mean and the median are both averages, but the upthread comment was about the median and yours about the arithmetic mean.
> There's really no contradiction there; all it takes is for there to be a couple low scores pulling the average down.
Well, no, when what you are estimating is relative performance by score percentiles, and people's self evaluation is biased toward the 70th percentile, that's not what is happening.
I think he mostly does as he preaches. My biggest complaint is the occasional contradiction, but if you read other writing style guides, he is not more contradictory than the average.
I think we have Hemingway to blame for this meme. I wonder why so very many authors feel the need to explicitly write these 'simple ode to simplicity' pieces — where each sentence in the exhortation has itself been optimized iteratively until no waste remains, so no lexical pixel has gone to waste. Sentences like 'Simple writing also lasts better,' are the unfortunate artifacts of this process. These are like the Teslas of brevity-pornographers: a mere five words attesting to hours of careful whittling; a praise-worthy awkwardness that could never have been produced on a native-speaker's first try.
Na, I think he just got that wrong. If he revisited the essay after a few years he’d probably spot it. Stuck out for me too. But a kind of “snow blindness” develops towards written content after a while, and mistakes slip through.
