And it’s not by the Stuffers this time, but by Microsoft’s MSN

Someone at MSN needs to learn that median and average are two quite different measures: Median is the halfway point in a group or sampling: half are above and half are below. Average, also called the mean, is obtained by totaling all the individual figures and dividing by the number in the group/sample.

When it comes to incomes, typically the average will be a higher figure than the median, because of a small number of big figures at the top end. A graph of total paid out at each step will be skewed by these entries.