Averages

Maths has always been a bit of mystery to me so I could do with some help.

If I have, say, 1000 drivers on £37K, 800 on £34K, 400 on £50K, 1200 on
£37K, 300 on £30K etc. how do I calculate the average salary across the
industry?

....and how to achieve that in Excel.

 

Average? Mean?

(37000*800) + (34000*800) + (50000*400) / 2000[1] would give a mean
salary.

[1] where 2000 is total drivers.

Simple spreadsheet here: http://prawn.mine.nu/drivers.xls

 

Thanks, exactly what I was after. Seems simple now.

 

You'll need 3 columns

"Salary", "number of drivers" and "total salary spend"

Each of the columns will have the information as above, with the "total
salary spend" on each row being the multiplication of the "salary" and
"number of drivers"

Then at the bottom of the table you add up all the figures in the
"number of drivers" column, and all the figures in the "total salary
spend", then divide the salary figure by the drivers figure

salary no of drivers total salary spend

37 1000 37000
34 800 27200
50 400 20000
37 1200 44400
30 300 9000

3700 137600

AVE= 37.18918919

 

What's the answer, then and would darsy get out of bed in the morning for
it?

 

The mode might be better than the mean.
It depends on what you are trying to prove.

 

I need some data and I won't get it until later in the week.

I think the hourly rate would be more interesting in terms of darsy.
It's not getting out of bed, it's how often and for how long that counts.

 

O level maths grinds into action - I may show all three (mode, mean and
meridian) but for my purposes, and that of the target audience, mean
would be the one most readily accepted.

Mean gets distorted if done without taking into account the number of
drivers - and I didn't know how to do that.

 

given that I wouldn't "get out of bed" for the highest of those
figures, the average is unlikely to be appealing

<fx: very rough sums>

hmm.

 

what you need is the standard deviation then. it shows the variation
on the spread and the inter quartile which shows the middle spread (ie
the numbers not skewed by the outliers.

if you send me the data when you get it I'll do some basic stats and
send you a nice table.
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Only if one group occurs significantly more frequently than the others
- I'm not sure that applies here.

You mean median - unless we're talking geography.

Mean's perfectly acceptable with the numbers you're crunching. The
mean gets distorted if you have crazy outliers - like including
company directors' wages in with 20 other cleaners etc.

 

Yeah, yeah. It was twenty four years ago.

 

WTF are they driving around for > £30k a year?

 

NAHAY?

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The penny has dropped. Fucking tube drivers...

 

Newcastle metro drivers get £30K, LUL £38K, mainline heavy rail more.

 

How come there's such a variation in wages?

 

I included tram and depot drivers in the examples.

However, even under BR there always was a variation in earnings
(dependent on the type of work predominant at each depot). When we
forced restructuring on the new companies these variations became
incorporated as guaranteed salary.

There are other factors to be considered such as time off, whether
Sundays are included in the working week (three rest days a week etc) and
various rostering and diagramming parameters which have a big impact on
productivity.

The average salary for UK train drivers (inc. Metro) is £36,382

 

earning that much for sitting on your arse all day, drinking tea, and
making sarcastic comments over the intercom!

Criminal!

 

ALL day! ****. That. 8h 45m and only 4 times a week.

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