What's it(s) mean?

[j4]

I asked AQA: "What's the average length of time for which UK jobs at AQA are advertised on the website? i.e. How long does it take for all/any positions to be filled? Thanks!"

AQA replied: "There's no average length of time, it just depends on the number of vacancies and the response. AQA advises applying immediately when they're advertised."

Now, call me a pedant, but I don't believe it's technically true that there's "no average length of time". I can entirely believe that they don't set a maximum or minimum length of time, and/or that they just don't want to tell me, but that's an entirely different kettle of question marks.

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, but that's only a statistical sample and its mean will be at best an approximation to the mean of the real distribution. In this case, a very bad approximation!

Hmmm. I guess it's possible they could deduce what distribution it was, and fill in the parameters from the data. But then surely anyone would send the formula? I assumed the original question was implicitly statistical in nature...

That is true. I could at least have arranged for it to be bimodal. However, it's rather difficult to avoid having a median...

Yeah... "Well, this week, two jobs were placed in time Δ, one in time ♣, one only after , and three had already been advertised for ⇑ months and remained unfilled, for a total median waiting time of E_INCOMPARABLE..." :)