Re: Not knowing how to read the statistics

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:11:50 -0700 (PDT), Tacia
<outofdejavu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 9?17?, ??12?46?, Old Mac User <chendrixst...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 16, 12:18 pm, Tacia <outofdej...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello,
How should I read the statistics below?

.XX +/-.25mm and .X +/-.10mm

Thank you.

Let's begin by telling us where these came from.
What is .XX? What is .X? OMU

Sorry. A person asks this question on a Taiwanese forum, which
discusses English.
No one replied him, so I posted it here.

In that case, the intended meaning of "XX" is probably
"two numerals". And there are a couple of usual ways of
reading it, depending on who is doing the reading and both
their background and their audience.

The ending of either is "Plus or minus 25 (10) hundredths millimeters"
or "Plus or minus point two five (one oh; or one zero) millimeters".
People reading a list of numbers are more likely to use "point", so
scientists and technicians can develop a habit of reading that way.
Schools teach young students to interpret the tenths and hundredths,
and so on. (I think that is still the practice.) For that reason,
non-technical people are less likely to use the version with "point".

A statistician would object, at the start, to the way that the second
number is written, since "point X", the mean or modal or average
value, is represented with less precision than its error, "point one
oh".

The first part of the number follows options similar to those for
the last part. Thus, it would be pronounced as "point blah-blah"; or
it could be "XX" hundredths; and "X" tenths.

A similar question was recently discussed in alt.usage.english,
where there was some amplification -- some people write and
say "zero point two five", placing a zero before a naked decimal
point. Other people don't like that, and will never use a zero
there. I do not recall whether there was any special difference
between American usage and British usage on this.

Personally, I started putting a zero before the decimal place as a
consequence of using computers for word processing: Text can be
"wrapped" to a new line, and I don't want to have a decimal
point in column 1 because a decimal point in column 1 sometimes
has a special meaning. For instance, a Net-group-reader may
assume that this "." line is supposed to be "quoted" material,
since < > . are all among the characters that used to be frequently
used (though, in recent years, I've mainly seen > ).




I will add the background information after he/she tells me.

--
Rich Ulrich
.

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