The average is a really amazing tool tat somebody thought of to think about how to summarize a very diverse set of information. Most people know what an average is, but you don't understand the average. Same thing would be true of risk, uncertainty, data. To understand random ast to spend your lifetime thinking about in getting a deeper and deeper and richer understanding. It's if you want to understand datay, to think about the idea of an outlie, or something that's wildly different from the average.
What do crossing rivers and investing in stocks have in common? Real education is seeing the connection between things that seem very different. EconTalk's host Russ Roberts talks about education with Alex Aragona of the podcast, The Curious Task. Roberts argues that the ability to apply insights from one area to another with which we're unfamiliar is one of the ways that real education differs from the mere accumulation of knowledge. And when we combine insights from two areas into something completely new, we can not only navigate rivers and stock markets, but also scale the heights of the human experience.