On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Robert Meyer wrote:
> My daughter has asked me if there are any tools / software programs
> that can resolve standard deviations; while Excel can determine a
> standard deviation of the Population, what formula is used for the
> (A) 5th Standard Deviation
> (B) 10th Standard Deviation
> (C) 25th Standard Deviation
> (D) 40'th Standard Deviation
> My Intro to Stat's and Probability , Stats for Business and Economics,
> and Elements of Probability Textbooks have no data on these.
Many of us would be glad to help, but as T.S. Lim has observed,
for most of us these "k-th Standard Deviations" are unknown quantities.
Whether Lim's conjecture (that percentiles were intended) is correct or
not we cannot tell without rather more context. Perhaps you could quote
the passage in the text or homework assignment that called for these
quantities?
I was intrigued by Stanislav K.'s remark that there actually are
such things -- estimates of standard deviation that are analogous (in a
way) to trimmed means -- but I would concur that such concepts are
unlikely to be entertained in an elementary course (which we presume to
be the general context, as implied partly by the list of textbooks you
had consulted).
If your daughter's instructor (we've been assuming there is such
a person, though you didn't actually say so, perhaps because we find it
difficult to imagine wanting to address such questions outside the
context of a homework assignment or a quiz!) really does want k-th
standard deviations, as advertised, I for one (and, I suspect, a number
of my colleagues) would be interested in references or citations for the
definition(s) s/he has in mind.
-- 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
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