Re: Whale steak

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 01:13:51 GMT, "Inger_Eleonora"
<inger_e.johansson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Eric Stevens" <eric.stevens@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:82b5c2l0alfhlusiag3o7ebfr5g3vsc5j6@xxxxxxxxxx
On 22 Jul 2006 15:02:42 -0700, "Tom McDonald" <kiltmac@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Alan Crozier wrote:
"Tom McDonald" <kiltmac@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1153591865.363471.156530@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<snip>

"'medium' speed? Do you mean an average speed, the *median*?..."

Good night, Inger. Come back when you have a civil tongue in your
head.


I can give you an answer, Tom. Swedish medel- in compound words can be
translated in a number of ways, one of which is "medium": medelhård
means medium-hard, medeldistans would be middle distance, medelfel is
standard error, medelsvensson means your average Swede,
medelvattenstånd
is mean water level, medelväre means mean value or average.

And, to get to the heart of the matter, medelhastighet is average
speed.

Thanks Alan.

However, as those of us who have taken statistical mathematicum know,
'average' is not a precise term without knowing whether the 'average'
intended is mean, mode or median. Inger did not so specify.

I've always understood average=mean with mode and median being
something different.

More complicated than that:
Mean = Average is the same as the Midway position, quality or condition
between two extrems. If you are to look for the mean in following line of
figures that would be 8:
1 3 4 8 10 12

Arithmetic mean = average = (1+3+4+8+10+12)/5 = 5.43

Median = the number in the middle of the set = (4+8)/2 = 6

Mode = the most common number --- there isn't one.

See http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57602.html

Now if you mean mean as a geomatric mean, you in daily discussion could say
average, but the figure you have wouldn't be the same.
"geometric mean
n.
The nth root, usually the positive nth root, of a product of n factors. "

Now mean used for a "arithmetic mean of a list of numbers is the sum of
all the members of the list divided by the number of items in the list."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_mean

As said there it's the same as students in many subjects where they are
working with figures from studies call 'mean'=average. As Wikipedia article
above say
"If the list is a statistical population, then the mean of that population
is called a population mean. If the list is a statistical sample, we call
the resulting statistic a sample mean"

But and this is what I was heading to when Tom and Alan showed that I was
right telling them to wait until they had checked the terms in statistic
mathematic:
"When the mean is not an accurate estimate of the median, the list of
numbers, or frequency distribution, is said to be skewed." it's also called
an artimathic mean.
But of course this isn't the same as average here.

Now we can complicate it even more by going thru
standard error of mean, which you can read about here:
http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/A103735.html

You can make it even more complicated by introducing Student's t-test
http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/t-test.html but that has nothing
to do with the definition of average.

and we can also complicate it even more by taking away extrems outside the
'normal' and so on.
But that's what we in Sweden call 'överkurs' more than what's needed to
study.

I suggest you consider the implication of the Buckingham Pi Theorem.

That, and the application of Haversines to the handicapping of car
rallies.

Inger E






While I'm happy to hear your response, this is a question that *she*
needs to answer.

Do you think I ought to drag out the hammock and cue the crickets?




Eric Stevens






Eric Stevens

.

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