The average seats now is not the typical one

Every skewed column has the same conversation attached to it, so here it is once, on seats_now in saas-subscriptions.

The mean is 59. The median is 8. That is a gap of 635.5%, and it is not noise — the p90 is 108 and the max is 1,385, so the top of the distribution is dragging the average somewhere a minority of rows actually live.

select
  avg(seats_now)                                                     as mean,
  percentile_cont(0.5) within group (order by seats_now)             as median,
  percentile_cont(0.9) within group (order by seats_now)             as p90,
  max(seats_now)                                                     as max
from saas_subscriptions;

The practical consequence is that "average seats now" answers a question nobody asked. If someone wants to know what a typical row looks like, the median answers it. If someone is forecasting a total, the mean is the right tool and the skew does not matter, because the mean times the count is the total.

So the rule is not "never use the mean". It is: name which question you are answering, then pick the statistic that answers it. A report that shows 59 with no median next to it has quietly decided you meant the first question.

There is a longer version of this in Describing a column without lying, and the pattern is the short one.