in any analysis ... whether with 2 or 50 or 400 ... you have to ask yourself: what am i doing this for?
are you just trying to summarize and describe the data in front of you? are you using the data as some estimate of a larger population of data? if it is the first purpose and, you have only several values ... you just lay them out for sore eyes to see ... and, even sore eyes will see what the data are like ... if you have 50 or 400 ... condensing methods of summarizing the data might be useful ... to sore OR good eyes if it is the second purpose ... then the issue becomes: do i have enough data (that were gathered in a good way) so that my estimate of what the population looks like ... will be decently accurate? then n becomes important one can "compute" things on 1 value or 2 values ... on up and up ... we can compute the mean on a value ... say 9 ... add up the value .. divide by 1 ... mean = 9 but, is that not a whole lot of effort for something that is patently obvious? it's not that there is some law against it ... or even some rule of thumb that suggests you should NOT do it ... it all boils down to why are you doing it and ... will it benefit you in any sensible way? . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
