I don't want to belabor this point, but from the practical point of view
of someone
who uses and generates data, which I think is fairly representative of
this group, a
mean is a representation of a geophysical property, and a stdev is not.
We collect in situ data, and I know that MANY of our instruments output
the mean
of several measurements, few do single spot samples. It would surprise
me to hear
anyone claim that these data sets do not represent geophysical quantities.
Again, I'm just suggesting that the rules for standard name modifiers
might be
tweaked to encourage user-friendly labeling of data. I suspect that most
data
publishers are already taking care not to share data that's labeled in a
CF-compliant
but misleading way.
Regards - Nan
On 3/29/13 9:08 AM, Kenneth S. Casey - NOAA Federal wrote:
> Nan - your statement below has me wondering about what a statistician
> would say. Would they say: A "mean" is still a statistical concept,
> and can not be measured. It can only be computed, statistically, as
> sum/N. In that sense, it is not really any different that standard
> deviation? the mean is where the distribution is centered, and the
> standard deviation is the width of that distribution. Neither is a
> discrete measurement and only make sense as part of a distribution.
> But I am not a statistician so I really do wonder what one would say?.
>
> -Ken
>
> On Mar 27, 2013, at 4:23 PM, Nan Galbraith <ngalbraith at whoi.edu
> <mailto:ngalbraith at whoi.edu>> wrote:
>
>> I don't think the standard deviation of the temperature of sea water
>> is really a
>> geophysical property; it's a mathematical concept, while a
>> temperature value
>> represented as a mean is still a temperature.
>
--
*******************************************************
* Nan Galbraith Information Systems Specialist *
* Upper Ocean Processes Group Mail Stop 29 *
* Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution *
* Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 *
*******************************************************
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