<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Leona Helmsley:
And even if the mean FF valuation was 2 cents/mile, I doubt that the median valuation would be that much, which I would believe to be the more important data point for an article like this - if you disagree, please explain why when economists report on the state of the housing industry, they talk about the median price, not the mean.</font>
What makes you think they are talking about a mean or a median? In order to do so, they would need to actually have some population (all frequent flyers/all companies/all award tickets issued) that is measured on how they value miles. Instead, the term "average" is just a journalist's way of saying "this is the number I get when I asked a couple people around the office".
But there is a good reason for the economists to use the median with home prices - and that is because the distribution of prices is skewed, with some prices being extremely high, and none being as extremely low. For that to be the case here, you would need some people/companies/tickets to value a mile very high. That may or may not be true.