Happiness is a Warm Statistic

In this otherwise interesting article on happiness, I found this irritating sentence:

But ordinary people believe they are happier than average (an obvious impossibility) and that they'll be even happier in 10 years' time.

It's quite possible for most people to be happier than average. It's not possible for them to be happier than the median. Of course, many traits have a normal distribution so the median and mean are close, but you shouldn't assume that, especially if you're a professional reporter.