Re: Basic rookie question about standard error

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:06:32 GMT, Paige Miller
<pmiller5NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 8/18/2005 4:11 AM, coleman.bill@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > I have a problem and I'm hoping that one of the gurus here will be able
> > to point me in the right direction!
> >
> > I'm attempting to get the standard error for a set of data. Basically,
> > I'm counting the number of occurances of x per item, y. The problem is
> > that there is a large number of Zero values in the results - i.e. the
> > "y" item has no occurances of "x" - a typical set of data would look
> > like this:
> >
> > 0, 20, 34, 0, 0, 0, 46, 15, 0, 29, 0 ,0, 32, 0
> >
> > So should I calculate the the standard error including the zero values,
> > or should I remove the zero values?
> >
> > I know it's probably a silly question, but I can't find the answer
> > anywhere and it's starting to become a problem!!! Thanks to anyone who
> > can help me.
>
> Why would you possibly want to remove the data that is a zero value?
> What reason is there to think that they do *not* contribute to the
> variability of the data that you are trying to estimate? They are data
> -- they tell you something.

On the other hand, sometimes it is useful to know both
versions of the information -- Here are (say) "the average
(and SD, and SE) of the number of children per household,
and here are the similar statistics where there is at least
one child."

Counting in the zeroes can be misleading. But be sure
that your audience knows what you are doing, because
silently dropping zeroes, ones that folks might figure are
there, would be even more misleading.


--
Rich Ulrich, wpilib@xxxxxxxx
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
.

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