Shopy 101
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Statistics

  1. Introduction
    1. What Is Statistics?
    2. Subjects in Modern Statistics
    3. Why Should I Learn Statistics? 0% developed
    4. What Do I Need to Know to Learn Statistics?
  2. Different Types of Data
    1. Primary and Secondary Data
    2. Quantitative and Qualitative Data
  3. Methods of Data Collection
    1. Experiments
    2. Sample Surveys
    3. Observational Studies
  4. Data Analysis
    1. Data Cleaning
    2. Moving Average
  5. Summary Statistics
    1. Measures of center
      1. Mean, Median, and Mode
      2. Geometric Mean
      3. Harmonic Mean
      4. Relationships among Arithmetic, Geometric, and Harmonic Mean
      5. Geometric Median
    2. Measures of dispersion
      1. Range of the Data
      2. Variance and Standard Deviation
      3. Quartiles and Quartile Range
      4. Quantiles
  6. Displaying Data
    1. Bar Charts
    2. Comparative Bar Charts
    3. Histograms
    4. Scatter Plots
    5. Box Plots
    6. Pie Charts
    7. Comparative Pie Charts
    8. Pictograms
    9. Line Graphs
    10. Frequency Polygon
  7. Probability
    1. Combinatorics
    2. Bernoulli Trials
    3. Introductory Bayesian Analysis
  8. Distributions
    1. Discrete Distributions
      1. Uniform Distribution
      2. Bernoulli Distribution
      3. Binomial Distribution
      4. Poisson Distribution
      5. Geometric Distribution
      6. Negative Binomial Distribution
      7. Hypergeometric Distribution
    2. Continuous Distributions
      1. Uniform Distribution
      2. Exponential Distribution
      3. Gamma Distribution
      4. Normal Distribution
      5. Chi-Square Distribution
      6. Student-t Distribution
      7. F Distribution
      8. Beta Distribution
      9. Weibull Distribution
  9. Testing Statistical Hypothesis
    1. Purpose of Statistical Tests
    2. Formalism Used
    3. Different Types of Tests
    4. z Test for a Single Mean
    5. z Test for Two Means
    6. t Test for a single mean
    7. t Test for Two Means
    8. paired t Test for comparing Means
    9. One-Way ANOVA F Test
    10. z Test for a Single Proportion
    11. z Test for Two Proportions
    12. Testing whether Proportion A Is Greater than Proportion B in Microsoft Excel
    13. Spearman's Rank Coefficient
    14. Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Coefficient
    15. Chi-Squared Tests
      1. Chi-Squared Test for Multiple Proportions
      2. Chi-Squared Test for Contingency
    16. Approximations of distributions
  10. Point Estimates </span> as of 12:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC)"}'>100% developed  as of 12:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC) (12:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC))
    1. Unbiasedness
    2. Measures of goodness
    3. UMVUE
    4. Completeness
    5. Sufficiency and Minimal Sufficiency
    6. Ancillarity
  11. Practice Problems
    1. Summary Statistics Problems
    2. Data-Display Problems
    3. Distributions Problems
    4. Data-Testing Problems
  12. Numerical Methods
    1. Basic Linear Algebra and Gram-Schmidt Orthogonalization
    2. Unconstrained Optimization
    3. Quantile Regression
    4. Numerical Comparison of Statistical Software
    5. Numerics in Excel
    6. Statistics/Numerical_Methods/Random Number Generation
  13. Time Series Analysis
  14. Multivariate Data Analysis
    1. Principal Component Analysis
    2. Factor Analysis for metrical data
    3. Factor Analysis for ordinal data
    4. Canonical Correlation Analysis
    5. Discriminant Analysis
  15. Analysis of Specific Datasets
    1. Analysis of Tuberculosis
  16. Appendix
    1. Authors
    2. Glossary
    3. Index
    4. Links

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Harmonic Mean

The arithmetic mean cannot be used when we want to average quantities such as speed.

Consider the example below:

Example 1: The distance from my house to town is 40 km. I drove to town at a speed of 40 km per hour and returned home at a speed of 80 km per hour. What was my average speed for the whole trip?.

Solution: If we just took the arithmetic mean of the two speeds I drove at, we would get 60 km per hour. This isn't the correct average speed, however: it ignores the fact that I drove at 40 km per hour for twice as long as I drove at 80 km per hour. To find the correct average speed, we must instead calculate the harmonic mean.

For two quantities A and B, the harmonic mean is given by: {\displaystyle {\frac {2}{{\frac {1}{A}}+{\frac {1}{B}}}}}

This can be simplified by adding in the denominator and multiplying by the reciprocal: {\displaystyle {\frac {2}{{\frac {1}{A}}+{\frac {1}{B}}}}={\frac {2}{\frac {B+A}{AB}}}={\frac {2AB}{A+B}}}

For N quantities: A, B, C......

Harmonic mean = {\displaystyle {\frac {N}{{\frac {1}{A}}+{\frac {1}{B}}+{\frac {1}{C}}+\ldots }}}

Let us try out the formula above on our example:

Harmonic mean = {\displaystyle {\frac {2AB}{A+B}}}

Our values are A = 40, B = 80. Therefore, harmonic mean {\displaystyle ={\frac {2\times 40\times 80}{40+80}}={\frac {6400}{120}}\approx 53.333}

Is this result correct? We can verify it. In the example above, the distance between the two towns is 40 km. So the trip from A to B at a speed of 40 km will take 1 hour. The trip from B to A at a speed to 80 km will take 0.5 hours. The total time taken for the round distance (80 km) will be 1.5 hours. The average speed will then be {\displaystyle {\frac {80}{1.5}}\approx } 53.33 km/hour.

The harmonic mean also has physical significance.