Statistics for Practical People

The Standard Deviation

There are hundreds of known "distribution types" which describe the

"shape" of a population. You could spend a lifetime just gathering the known information together, let alone learning any of it. The principal task is to calculate areas under these curves. We will look at only 2: 1. The triangular distribution(for illustration). Suppose we had a distribution that was triangle shaped like this:

Remember that "" is the true average of this population. We would like to have a table showing "how close" the items in the population are to the mean. Two problems arise. First, it would depend on the units used. You would need a different table for acres vs. hectares vs. square miles, etc. Second, the shape may be a triangle, but it could be a short wide triangle or a tall narrow one. Couldn't you replace all these possible tables with just one for any triangular distribution? Of course you could, you just have to measure it cleverly. Let's call of the base of the triangle "the base unit", and measure areas "around the mean" as percentages of the total population.

What proportion of the population lies within one base unit from the mean? Clearly, 100%. How about 0.5 base units on each side of the mean? A bit of math (there are people to do this for us) would tell us 75%. How about 0.25 of our base unit? 21.875% is the answer. We now have a short table we can use on any triangular distribution. Suppose we have one like this:

The base unit is clearly equal to "30 grebs" (whatever that is - but it doesn't matter you see). How much of the population is between 85 and 115 (100 15) grebs? 75% of course, because 15 grebs is the same as 0.5 base units, and we have a table that tells us that. If we were to randomly pick a new item from the population we could say "with 75% confidence" that it would fall within 0.5 base units, (or in this case 15 grebs) from the mean. Such an interval could be called "a 75% confidence interval". How much of the population is between 115 and 130? Half of the 25% on the "outside" of the 85-115 range, or 12% (the other 12% is between 70-85).

We have now "standardized" all the possible bases of triangular distributions into one kind of base unit, and one table can be made up to tell us all about the areas under a triangular distribution. We can easily switch back and forth from base units to real numbers in grebs, pounds, BF, etc. -- with a little practice.

Rectangular distribution The probability density function p(x) of a rectangular distribution is as follows P (x) = 1/ 2. , a_ < x < a+ , where a = ( a + - a_ ), Given below is the figure that is representative for rectangular distribution.

When to use rectangular distribution ? In those cases, where it is possible to estimate only the upper and lower limits of an input quantity (X) and there is no specific knowledge about the concentration of values of (X) within the interval, one can only assume that it is equally probable for X to lie anywhere within this interval. Illustration for rectangular distribution i. Volume

5 cc class bulb pipettete has tolerance of 0.03 c.c. Tolerance means that a particular pipettete has a volume between 4.970 cc to 5.030 cc at 20c. It is due to the control in manufacturing process, and most of the pipettete made are close to 5.00 cc, and only few are outliers.

But we can not say, in what way this volume, 5 c.c is distributed in all the pipettetes manufactured and available in lab, but one can assume that true volume in the pipettete of the lab has an equal probability of being any value in the range 4.970 cc to 5.030 c.c. The probability distribution for the pipettete volumes then must be assumed to be such that there is constant probability throughout the tolerance range, 4.97 cc to 5.030 cc, and zero probability out side this range. The distribution shows that any capacity between 4.97 cc and 5.03 cc has equal probability and any capacity out side this range zero probability. The actual probability of any capacity with in the range is 1/2a, where a is the half width of the distribution. This is a simple requirement arising from the fact that the area under the distribution, which represents the total probability of all capacities, must be unity, i.e. 2a x 1/2a. And for the rectangular distribution the standard deviation is given by a/30.5 When dispersion of measurement is represented by a rectangular distribution, then the standard uncertainty is the half width of the distribution divided by the square root of three, i.e 1.732 . Though the tolerance of a 5 cc class B pipettete is 0.03 cc, the standard uncertainty in the 5.00 cc capacity pipettete is 0.03/30.5 = 0.03/1.732= 0.017 cc.

Conclusion: When calibration data is given in terms of tolerance interval, then in evaluating its standard uncertainty, rectangular distribution is presumed