Post

Whenever I read discourse on AI energy/water use that focuses on the "median query," I can't help but feel misled. Coding agents like Claude Code send hundreds of longer-than-median queries every session, and I run dozens of sessions a day. On my blog: www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-01...

They pick the median probably because it makes them look better. In this case it's probably better to use an average...

I mean the discourse using the median. Mean is much more appropriate to discuss impacts like this because it includes rather than excludes far outliers.

but it's a bit *too* sensitive to the outliers! Esp. in an environment where some few users might be like Mr Gas Town, running 12 Claude Code instances in parallel all day - their potential impacts are huge, but comparing to them might make the OP's usage seem small. Median's better, no?