NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Lunars using Bennett
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2008 Apr 6, 17:42 +1000
From: Peter Fogg
Date: 2008 Apr 6, 17:42 +1000
Frank you wrote: > you were on the right track but I think > you missed the final point. Hmm. Its become an increasingly difficult point to miss! Seriously, thanks for this detailed explanation, and to Alex and Bill Noyce too. > You should try your spreadsheet example again. Yes, that's a good idea. We are still considering a sample of 100, each set the result of adding 6 values between 0.0 and 60.0 (it occurs to me now they should have been 0.0 to 59.9) and then the addition of those same values after they have been rounded to the nearest whole number. The next column shows the difference, and at the bottom of that column the standard deviation is displayed: 0.7. Excel file attached. If I've understood correctly, the standard deviation should approximate 1.22 (0.5xsqrt6). While I find the result intriguing, I wouldn't want to make too much of it (small sample, etc). The Wikipedia article was also interesting, if potentially confusing. I was struck by: "As expected of a random walk with equally probable outcomes, the expected value will come out to zero." which seems to imply that, relating this back to our example, that the equally probable average difference of 0.5 (between a value rounded up or down) will ... tend to cancel themselves out! No doubt I have misunderstood. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
File: 104801.sd-roundings.xls