Statistical Analysis

Variability of dataAll living things vary, even two peas in the

same pod, so how do we measure this variation?

We plot data usually using the mean, but error bars are a graphical representation of variability of data.

Error bars show;either showing range (highest & lowest

value)or showing standard deviation (±1 s.d.)

What is the importance of error bars?The error bars show the spread of data

around the meanIf the error bars are large then the data has a

large range and if they are small the range is smaller.

If we use the sd as our error bars it is more accurate as it includes all data and not just the range, which may be extreme and not representative of the results

1.1.2 Calculate mean and standard deviation of a set of values

Appreciate the nature of the mean (average) value

Consider whether mode (most frequent value) or median values (middle value) would be more useful.

12 14 11 15 17 10 13 14 14 16

12 12 12 12 19 122 147 209 12 22

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

A normal distribution has the same value for mean, median and mode

Mean is useful, it is the focus of the dataWe can then measure the deviation or

variance from the meanEvaluation of the variance of the mean

useful

What is important about normally distributed data?

If the data is tightly clustered there will be small variances, but if the data is more evenly spread over the whole range, the variance would be bigger

Standard DeviationThe standard deviation is an 'average' number for the

distance of the majority of measures from the mean.

The standard deviation is usually a preferable method of measuring spread, as opposed to the simpler 'Range' calculation, as it takes account of all measurements.

The Greek letter, sigma, (is often used to signify standard deviation.It is of particular value when used with the Normal distribution, where known proportions of the measurements fall within one, two and three standard deviations of the mean.

This shows the standard deviations about a normal distribution

1.1.3 State-standard deviation summarizes the spread of values around the means and 68% of the values fall within one standard deviation and 95% of values fall within two standard deviationsMean =66.6Standard deviation= 6.6

Then you can state that if your data is normally distributed;

68% of values will fall between 60.0 and 73.295% of values will fall between 53.4 and 79.8

REMEMBER THIS……STANDARD DEVIATION summarises the

SPREAD of data around the mean

68% of all values fall within 1 sd of the mean ( 34% above and 34% below)

Hand span mm±1

Number of students (f)

120-129 2

130-139 4

140-149 5

150-159 9

160-169 6

170-179 2

180-189 1

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statistics - then standard deviation

Calculate mean and standard deviation from frequency table

How can we show the S.D. in our results?If we plot the mean, we can then use 1 S.D.

on an error bar to show the amount of spread of data.

This will indicate how accurate the results are.

Small error bars = accurate results

Assume these bars were for ±1 s.d.

Comment on significance