Does anyone in this discussion ever use the Average Deviation (of the Mean)?
I tend to use it in my intro labs because we are normally dealing with small
sets of measured values (3-5 trials). I think I've seen this under other
names here Sum(|value(i)-mean|)/N which is slightly different from the
standard deviation. However, what I don't know for sure is the confidence
factor when one quotes mean +/- AD, if in fact there is a well defined
factor when dealing with such small data sets.
Rick
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Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
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PC & Mac
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
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