The Experience Machine: The Above Average Driver Fallacy

In Radio 4's new series, The Philosopher's Arms, Dr David Geaney once more trotted out the truism about how ridiculous it is that the majority of drivers consider themselves to be better than average. If it hadn't been said in a forum for people to publicly flex their superior intellect, I would not be concerned but to hear the audience superciliously tittering was much too irritating for me to keep quiet.

This pompous myth can easily be exposed as a fallacy.

In its simplest form, if there were a total of ten drivers and nine were of, say, level 10 ability and one was level 0, the average would be 9, so nine out of the ten drivers would indeed be above average.

OK, so what if the levels were not so extreme? If nine were of level 6 ability and one was level 1, the average would be 5.5, so nine out of the ten drivers would still be above average.

But with tighter figures, it is also true, if there were four drivers with level 4 driving skills and six with level 6, the average would be 5.2, so still most drivers would be above average.

Unfortunately, the world seems to be run by people who falsely believe themselves to be of above average intellect. And this kind of sleight of hand has been frequently used expediently to massage statistics.