Just do what I did.

Use a search engine to establish the UK mean average wage, then the population in full time work. I used gov.uk.

I then used a Gaussian distribution formula to establish the point that represented £50k relative to the mean average and so found the area under the curve corresponding to £50k and above.

Rather than being smart arsed and showing all the working and expressing the number of people to the nth decimal I simply showed the number as a round figure.

So not a guess. A number based on verifiable and accurate sources (if gov.uk can be trusted which admittedly is moot) and because of the means employed to extract it being accepted statistical practice.

Farshtanen?

No, mate, I don't do Yiddish .....

Funny that. I read it as plugging the sum involved into some form of perspective.

A lot of elderly people will read £740k as big bucks and that around £4k a month which is what it amounts to as being exceptional.

It isn't.

I think it’s exceptional looking at this .
11 Sep 2018 · Londoners take home the top wages at £727 a week - which is £314 more than the lowest earners in Southend who earn less than half of that, with an average weekly wage of £413

I think it’s exceptional looking at this .
11 Sep 2018 · Londoners take home the top wages at £727 a week - which is £314 more than the lowest earners in Southend who earn less than half of that, with an average weekly wage of £413

Source?

There are no prizes for guessing that salaries are highest in London, where the average weekly wage is £727.

Nor that the capital is followed by neighbouring towns and cities.

The next six highest earning places are all in the South East, with average wages of £600 or more in Reading, Crawley, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Slough and Oxford.

That's largely because they are all home to significant numbers of highly skilled workers who can command good wages. It's also due to their proximity to London, which helps these places attract high-paying companies.

But it's not just the South East that is doing well, with wages of almost £600 per week in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Derby, thanks mainly to their successful finance, oil and manufacturing industries.

The UK's lowest paid towns and cities

At the other end of the table, the lowest pay is, perhaps surprisingly, found in another place close to London.

At £413 per week, average pay in Southend is just over half that in the capital.

This helps explain why so many people commute from Southend into London, with one in five of its working population making the journey.

The number of people earning their money in London means that the average salary among Southend residents is £144 higher than it is for those who actually work in the town.

However, Southend is one of the few places in the South East near the bottom of the pay-scale. Worthing is the only other town from the region in the bottom 10.

More broadly, there is a definite north-south divide when it comes to wages, with most - but not all - of the lowest paid towns and cities in Yorkshire and the North West of England.

Huddersfield has the second lowest wage of any large town or city, with its workers earning £424 per week on average. It is followed by Birkenhead and Wigan, where workers are paid £428 and £436 respectively.

Belfast (£514) and Cardiff (£505) also fall under the UK average for wages, despite being the capitals of Northern Ireland and Wales respectively.

Source?

Probably:

The UK towns and cities with the highest and lowest wages


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43729508
P
Extract

Right. That targets a selection of places and not the UK as a whole.

London will be dragged down because of the very large population and the very high number of relatively low pay jobs that have wage higher than in eg SoS because of what used to be known as London Weighting.

But when the UK AS A WHOLE is used a very different figure emerges which is what I showed.

If you note from the list shown the average figure given is £539 but no mention is made as to it being the mathematical average used (though I suspect it will be the mean)

When the figure £539 is expressed as an annual value it drops out as being about £28k which stacks with the number from gov.uk.

Just goes to show, it depends how yer tell 'em. Typical BBC though. Pick the story you want to convey and find "facts" to fit.

The old dad was not an earner. He was on war benefits amounting to about 50k a year - on average - over 15 years. That's not far short of a grand a week and probably more per year in the final years.