Please help me by finding the following information which the
professor of my statistics class remembers seeing somewhere but cannot
now find:

the mean American income calculated both with and without Bill Gates included.

If it helps, Wikipedia pointed toward this Census page, which has the
mean American household income at $60,528 in 2004:
http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/hhinc/new06_000.htm

the values we're in search of may be for individuals or households. 
they would probably
have been done using data from within the last 16 years.  anything
within that range is acceptable.

this information, if it can be found, is meant to serve as an example
of how the mean as a measure of central tendency is susceptible to
the influence of outliers (especially extreme ones).
thank you

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Request for Question Clarification by bobbie7-ga on 05 Sep 2006 21:43 PDT

Uniace,

Is this by any chance what you're looking for?

"For example, consider what would happen to the average of your city's
household income if Bill Gates lived in your city: If there are 10,000
people in your city and everyone earns $50,000 annually except
Bill Gates who makes $100,000,000, the mean is $59,995. The median is $50,000,
and it can be argued that this more closely represents the population."

BBER - Research Bureau of the UMD School of Business and Economics.
http://www.d.umn.edu/lsbe/departments/bber/projects/ABA/bberFeb2001.pdf

Bobbie7

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Clarification of Question by uniace-ga on 07 Sep 2006 15:57 PDT

Yeah sure, that's good enough.

Uniace,

I'm pleased my findings work for you.

"For example, consider what would happen to the average of your city's
household income if Bill Gates lived in your city: If there are 10,000
people in your city and everyone earns $50,000 annually except
Bill Gates who makes $100,000,000, the mean is $59,995. The median is $50,000,
and it can be argued that this more closely represents the population."

BBER - Research Bureau of the UMD School of Business and Economics.
http://www.d.umn.edu/lsbe/departments/bber/projects/ABA/bberFeb2001.pdf


Best regards, 
Bobbie7

Bill Gate's net worth fluxuates greatly year by year because he is
invested heavily in the stock market.  What you would consider his
real income (his pay from Microsoft) probably isn't all that high.

Let's assume it's a HUGE amount (which I doubt) at $1 Billion per
year.  If you divide his pay by the 300 million people or 100 million
households in the US then the effect is almost 0:
$1 billion / 300 million people = $3.33
$1 Billion / 100 million households = $10

So if Bill Gates makes $1 Billion every year and gave away every penny
he made then the average household in the US could fill up 1/3rd of
their gas tank every year on his generosity.
When looking at the skew of means on such a large population, it is
rare that 1 outlyer makes a big difference.  If you look at the 5000
richest people or if Bill Gates were to make $1 Trillion per year,
then there would be significant results.