I don't want to belabor this point, but from the practical point of view
of someone
who uses and generates data, which I think is fairly representative of
this group, a
mean is a representation of a geophysical property, and a stdev is not.
We collect in situ data, and I know that MANY of our instruments output
the mean
of several measurements, few do single spot samples. It would surprise
me to hear
anyone claim that these data sets do not represent geophysical quantities.
Again, I'm just suggesting that the rules for standard name modifiers
might be
tweaked to encourage user-friendly labeling of data. I suspect that most
data
publishers are already taking care not to share data that's labeled in a
CF-compliant
but misleading way.
Regards - Nan
On 3/29/13 9:08 AM, Kenneth S. Casey - NOAA Federal wrote:
Nan - your statement below has me wondering about what a statistician
would say. Would they say: A "mean" is still a statistical concept,
and can not be measured. It can only be computed, statistically, as
sum/N. In that sense, it is not really any different that standard
deviation… the mean is where the distribution is centered, and the
standard deviation is the width of that distribution. Neither is a
discrete measurement and only make sense as part of a distribution.
But I am not a statistician so I really do wonder what one would say….
-Ken
On Mar 27, 2013, at 4:23 PM, Nan Galbraith <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I don't think the standard deviation of the temperature of sea water
is really a
geophysical property; it's a mathematical concept, while a
temperature value
represented as a mean is still a temperature.
--
*******************************************************
* Nan Galbraith Information Systems Specialist *
* Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 *
* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution *
* Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 *
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