I love aggregate statistics. Sure, I know this makes me a dweeb, but I am cool with that (and the Harley in my back yard helps my aggregate dweeb score to stay in check).
There is an article on Time.com today that is talking about what an “average American” is. There is a really nice quote that tidily sums up the meaningfulness of aggregate statistics:
But if the perfect average is a mirage, you can still learn something by comparing yourself to the crowd.
In no way are aggregate statistics an end-all / be-all. However, they are vital to spotting trends. In the early days of our Plato’s Closet, when we were desperate to spot sales trends early, we decided to track a rolling seven day sales average instead of looking at individual days. Now that we have several years worth of data it is clear that even that minimal level of aggregation proves to be very useful in spotting trends quickly.
Aggregate statistics are going to be one of the things that really sets statzen apart from every other statistics packages bloggers are currently using.
