A way with worlds: 35 - Normalcy

Last week we discussed knowing what the odds are for occurrences in your world. Maybe you know the odds of various occurrences on your world, but, do you know what is normal in your world, what is average, what is expected?

In fact, just how are you defining normal in your world? Do you even have an idea of what is normal in your setting or how people define it?

Knowing when things are odd or noteworthy in your world is one thing - the flipside is knowing just what is normal in the setting you've created. We don't think about "normal" as often as we should when we create our worlds.

However, "normal" is a slippery beast that can trap you when you pursue it. So, let's try and chase it down . . .

GETTING MEAN:
When we describe normal in a story world (and the real world), it usually comes down to math: "The average age is 32", "the average Grutalian lives 100 years," etc. We usually pick a number or a category that can be defined by a number (years of education, etc.) and call it normal for our worlds. It's simple, easy, compact, and doesn't take too much work.

When we describe normal in our worlds, thus, we're all too often discussing simple mathematical averages. Mathematical average (called "The Mean" in statistics) actually describes very little of the world - it's a simple mathematical calculation, that's it. Add up all the numbers involved (like ages of everyone in a population), divide by how many numbers you added - bang, you have the mean.

The mean is also virtually useless to a writer. In fact, having done scientific research, I can say it's not exactly the greatest tool for hard or soft science either. It doesn't really get useful until you apply a whole bunch of other mathematical tools, and needless to say I doubt you care about them.

For instance in a world where one out of every one-thousand people are vampires, would you say everyone is 1/1000 vampire? You wouldn't. In a world where one out of a hundred people is a wizard, does that mean everyone has 1/100th the magical skill of a wizard? No.

That's why having an idea of your means - be they age, education, etc. - in your world doesn't mean very much. In fact, it's very easy to just yank a mean out of the air as a quick guide, a number that seems right - but as a guide, it's not very helpful.

In fact, there are other mathematical constructs used to describe "normalcy" beyond the mean, like median and mode (which I won't bother to describe). Yes, even statisticians have varied definitions and ideas of normal - and you don't want me to get started on alphas, betas, standard deviations and more. Don't even ask about Factor Analyses.

What is important about normal is not the mean - its distributions of elements.

DISTIBUTIONS:
Let's say I've designed a world and the average person has a high school degree. Does that mean everyone does? Does that mean fifty percent of my characters do? What does it mean?. What can do you do with that knowledge? Give everyone in your cast a high school degree? Give fifty percent of your cast a high school degree?

In the case of the "high school degree" what does matter is what percentage of the population has that degree - and has more education or less. In short, when needing to know what is normal in your worlds, know the distributions - such as what percentage of people have a certain level of education, or how much of a world is dry land.