Was reading about Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report 2010 and remembered that The Straits Times aka No.1 propaganda newspaper made a report about it some time back.

The Straits Times claimed that Singapore is ranked 2nd in Asia Pacific and 4th in the world in terms of average personal wealth.

Sure or not? One might ask. Well, it's only one side of the story.

That is not an accurate calculation as only 3.6% of the population (not revealed in the newspaper) owned more than USD500000. The majority which is around 55% fall in the 10000-100000 range. Approximately 23% are in the 1000-10000.

With all these figures, who the heck are the wealthy ones in Singapore to be labeled 4th in the world?

On the other hand, using median wealth per adult (in USD) would be a more balanced and accurate approach. And the average number of Singapore only amounts to 30092 when it comes to median.

Unlike mean (or average), median takes the value which separates the higher half from the lower half.

Here is an example to paint a clearer picture

Let's say there are 7 people living in Raymond Kingdom and their wealth are

1. $50000
2. $60000
3. $65000
4. $65000
5. $70000
6. $75000
7. $80000

Here, the numbers are quite fairly distributed. The average wealth in this case is $66429. The median would be number 4 which is $65000. Quite close right?

How about this?

1. $50000
2. $60000
3. $65000
4. $65000
5. $70000
6. $75000
7. $500000

The 7th person is obviously the odd one out. So, the median still remains status quo at $65000 but the average would work out to be $126429!!!

While The Straits Times can continue to boast about all the "fictional facts", Singapore is sadly ranked at 25th spot in terms of median wealth. I better not put up the list in case of copyright issues, you can google on your own.

And sad to say, Singapore is the only one in the list where median wealth is less than GDP per capita.