Monday, September 25, 2006

Rationalizing Wealth - Forbes.com

Rationalizing Wealth - Forbes.com: "Rationalizing Wealth
William Baldwin 10.09.06

More From William Baldwin

A question for a statistician: how freakish are those outliers on the rich list, the fortunes of Gates, Buffett and Adelson? A question for a moralist: How appalling?

You could go crazy trying to graph the net worth of Americans on a bell curve. You'd run out of paper. On a standard chart the plot point for Bill Gates looks like Pluto's orbit. Or, to put it in a statistician's terms, the billion-dollar fortunes showcased in this issue are a whole lot more than six sigmas away from the average household net worth, which is near $450,000."

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