Are We Dumber than 5th Graders?

I was reading an article this morning that was providing the Census Bureau's data on new home sales.  September numbers came in at 770,000 units up from the revised August numbers of 735,000 units.  Discussing further that these numbers were still down from the 835,000 units projected in July and none of these numbers included the cancellations that builders saw in August and September.  All bad news.  I'm not sure that the rest of the country is dealt with the denial of what is going but I have and it continues to look dreary.  Foreclosures, excess inventory, and a slowing economy are all going to continue to take its toll. 

But in this article the author gave his opinion that the one piece of good news was that the median sales price was up 5% from year ago levels.  On the surface it could appear to be good news.  We could rationalize that I'm selling less units but each unit is selling for more money.  Let's go back to 5^th grade math, well I'm not sure that we learned this in 5^th grade but I liked the title.   Median is not the average value of homes sold, that is mean.  Median is, by Webster's definition, a value in an ordered set of values below and above which there is an equal number of values or which is the arithmetic mean of the two middle values if there is no one middle number.  Well when I say it like that we might think that we are dumber than a fifth grader.  Basically if 11 houses are sold, the value of the 6 house when listed in value order from lowest to highest is the median.  Here is an example (25,50,75,100,125,600,605,610,615,616)  the median is 600.  If we averaged (adding the list then dividing by the count, 11), the mean, would be 311.  So out of all the units of houses sold in September the number that was in the middle was $235,000 and last year it was $11,750 less. 

I'm not disputing the fact that the median is up 5% what I am disputing is the fact that it's good news. What I think is less units are selling at the lower values, borrowers with lower income, bruised credit and no down payment are being pushed out of the market.  There are less homes selling and more of them in the higher values but this doesn't compare the value of similar houses.  This type of reporting gives the common reader the idea that values are going up.  I'm sure most Realtors and appraisers could attest that isn't true.