Raul Miller <[email protected]> writes:

> J's standard deviation routine seems to already be dealing with the
> numerical stability issue.
> [...]
> Or am I overlooking something?

J's standard deviation routine is perfectly accurate for any sane data.
John Cook gave an (extreme) example where Welford's method gives a
reasonable value the sum-of-squared-deviance method (the one used by J's
stddev) breaks down:

   stddev 1e11+?1e6#0
0.538747

(He actually goes all the way to 1e12 rather than just 1e11.)

Now, clearly, this is numerical extremism.  I just wanted to reproduce
the experiment myself.  I still have to think my way through the
examples that others have provided.

Regards,
Johann

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