A statistical question, not specific to R. I'm asking for a pointer for a source of definitive descriptions of what types of data are best summarized by the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic means.
As an aquatic ecologist I see regulators apply the geometric mean to geochemical concentrations rather than using the arithmetic mean. I want to know whether the geometric mean of a set of chemical concentrations (e.g., in mg/L) is an appropriate representation of the expected value. If not, I want to explain this to non-technical decision-makers; if so, I want to understand why my assumption is wrong. TIA, Rich ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
