Measures of dispersion: distribution
- Thread starter Xtal
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- Feb 4, 2004
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Something tells me there's more to this exercise than just the part you've quoted, probably about skew or real-world reasonableness. Please reply with that information. Thank you!
If you are saying that the -2 sigma point is -6 and the +2 sigma point is +26, then your estimator of the mean is 10 and sigma is 8.
That's all! Mean and sigma don't tell you anything about the shape of the distribution.
Ohhhhhh you guys are smart... stapel, this is the exercise:
If we have some length of hospital stay data with a mean stay of 10 days and a SD of 8 days then calculate 2 SD for this data, i.e.
The length of stay will be between _______ days and _________ days.
- for this i got -6 and 26.
Are these values for 'length of stay' plausible? Why?
What does this tell you about the distribution of the data?
If we have some length of hospital stay data with a mean stay of 10 days and a SD of 8 days then calculate 2 SD for this data, i.e.
The length of stay will be between _______ days and _________ days.
- for this i got -6 and 26.
Are these values for 'length of stay' plausible? Why?
What does this tell you about the distribution of the data?
Can your stay be a negative number of days? Is the distribution symmetric?