[BiO BB] Mean and Standard deviation

Ryan Raaum ryan.raaum at gmail.com
Tue Feb 21 12:41:22 EST 2006


Hi,

One thing you might consider is that your data are nowhere near normally
distributed, so it's unclear how mean and standard deviation are useful
summary statistics for these data.

Best,

Ryan

On 2/21/06, Subhash Agarwal <smagarwal at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Forum Memebers
>
> I have a dataset with 394 data points. The frequecy distribution of which
> is as follows:
>
>     0-0.02 85 0.02-0.04 63 0.04-0.06 51 0.06-0.08 39 0.08-0.1 36 0.10-0.12
> 24 -0.12-0.14 21 0.14-0.16 19 0.16-0.18 13 0.18-0.2 10            >0.20
>             33
>
> The mean and SD of the data is 0.0842 and 0.0853. But when the data points
> from 0-0.02 and > 0.2 are removed and the mean and SD is calculated it is
> found that mean doesnt change much (0.0819) but SD does (0.0472). My query
> is what can I interpret from this regarding the data.
>
> If any of the forum members feels that this question should be addressed
> to some other place do let me know.
>
> Thanks
> Subhash
>
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--
Ryan Raaum
http://www.rockefeller.edu -- Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology
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