On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, Milo Schield wrote:
> In the 1983 Guinness Book of World Records under OCEANS, the following
> appears concerning the heights of waves:
> "It has been calculated on the statistics of the Stationary Random
> theory that one wave in more than 300,000 may exceed the average by a
> factor of 4."
>
> What is a reference on Stationary Random statistical theory?
> What assumptions are involved in modeling random interactions of waves?
> What is the sampling distribution for the heights of "random" waves?
I don't have answers to these questions; but I note that if one
considers the average height of waves to be akin to a standard deviation
(which seems on the face of it not too unreasonable), if the sampling
distribution were normal the corresponding number would be about 15,000.
(Area in both tails beyond 4 s.d.s is 0.000064, according to one of my
textbooks.)...
-- DFB.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donald F. Burrill [EMAIL PROTECTED]
348 Hyde Hall, Plymouth State College, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MSC #29, Plymouth, NH 03264 603-535-2597
184 Nashua Road, Bedford, NH 03110 603-471-7128
