Re: [Phys-l] Curve fitting versus averaging [was question on averaging]

[Brian Whatcott <betwys1@sbcglobal.net>]

Crawford MacCallum wrote:
> I was taught one hundred years ago to average the 
> differences between position 0 and n/2, 1 and n/2 + 1, ... 
> thus using all the data.
> Crawford
>   
I am visualizing taking an average of the differences given by posn 1 - 
posn 0,
posn2 - posn1 and so on supposing the errors are randomly distributed about
the mean value. This seems to provide a smaller error that  dividing the
difference of  (posn  n - posn 0)  / n.

I wonder what cases I am missing?
Perhaps I should be using an ensemble of one step differences, two step 
differences
divided by two, three step differences divided by three and so on?

:-)

Brian W