Anthony DeBarros

Sunset on the road near our house today, shot by my wife using just her cell phone camera. Fits the peaceful time of year when lots seems to have quieted down in preparation for the new year to come.

Filed under: Life by Anthony on Dec 27, 2009
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A common way to summarize a group of numbers — one most of us learned in grade school — is to find its mean, commonly called the average. But it’s not always the best measure.

Let’s say six kids go on a field trip, ages 10, 11, 10, 9, 13 and 12. It’s easy to add the ages and divide by six to get the group’s average age:

(10 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 13 + 12) / 6 = 10.8

Because all the ages are close, the average of 10.8 gives us a good picture of the group as a whole. But averages are less helpful when the values are skewed toward one end or if they include outliers.

For example, what if we add a much older chaperone to our field trip? With ages of 10, 11, 10, 9, 13, 12 and 46, the average age of the group rises considerably:

(10 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 13 + 12 + 46) / 7 = 15.9

Now the mean is not an accurate representation. The outlier skews the average, and no journalist should feel comfortable reporting it.

This is where calculating a median is handy. The median is the midpoint in an ordered list of values — the point at which half the values are higher and half lower. If the median household income in East Middletownburg is $50,000, then half the households earn more and half less.

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Filed under: Analysis, Excel by Anthony on Dec 27, 2009
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Thousands of school cafeterias went uninspected in the 2007-08 school year, we report today in the fourth major installment of our “Trouble on the Tray” investigation into school lunch safety.

In today’s story, reporters Blake Morrison and Peter Eisler worked with me to examine data on the number of schools in each state that met a federal requirement to have two cafeteria inspections annually. We found that in eight states, more than half of schools reporting failed to meet that standard in 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years.

Meanwhile, the series continues to draw attention on Capitol Hill. This week, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., called on the federal government to increase its standards for meat used in school lunches and to cut contracts with companies that repeatedly did not meet standards.

Filed under: Analysis by Anthony on Dec 16, 2009
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