Letter: Mean pickings

Saturday 20 November 1999 00:02 GMT

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Sir: Your leading article "The figures on average pay do not add up" (15 November) mentions, as averages, only the mean and the median.

What many people think of as the average person's pay is the mode, that income which more persons get than any other. The graph accompanying your news report the same day showed it to be about pounds 250 a week, well below both the pounds 334 median and the pounds 400 mean. It is only just double the legal minimum pay for a 35-hour week.

Perhaps your reporting in future should consider using the mode as a measure of average earnings, too.

Sir REGINALD E W HARLAND

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

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