On 24 Aug 2003 15:58:53 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donald Burrill) wrote: > Hi, Dennis. > You did not address the question, so far as I can see. You stated an > answer, which I take to be your personal opinion on the point, but you > supplied no supporting arguments. > I had asked "are those properly called 'z' scores?", because z scores > are commonly defined in terms of population values (aka parameters), > while the values I was questioning were calculated from sample values. > Possibly a minor and not-very-interesting point, but I'm unwilling to > take an unsupported assertion as a reasoned reply ;-). >
Hey, Donald, So far, I have to side with Dennis on this one. I've never thought twice about people scoring up <whatever they have> as z-scores, and calling them z-scores. And we never have population values, so we would never have z-scores, if that is what we were supposed to use. So I guess it seems to me to be "an unsupported assertion" that z-scores are "commonly defined in terms of population values." I will agree that for descriptive purposes, it is much nicer to have a very large N than a small one, but that's always been the case. [ snip, rest] -- Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." Justice Holmes. . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
