Drawing several charts with LibreOffice Calc:
http://www.hostmypic.net/pictures/93969c88a3ecaac84ba81c8d38...
And it is almost obvious that we have two data sets: (A, D, E) and (B, C, F)
What tool would *you* use to solve this?
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#32I have only two numbers 50 and 60 - one is a weight and another is a temperature. Now I have another number, 80. What kind of number is that? No way to know. The fact that there are multiple values make no difference - the data is the data!
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#33Standard dev seamed to be enough. I sorted and graphed the data to to be sure.
My thought was to match the bell curves, but this is nearly the same thing now that I think about it.
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#34I used my app https://app.prettygraph.com to quickly look at the histograms. B and F look almost identical with a very normal distribution. The others look more like twin-peaks. Edit: If you want to try, copy the data and click the "Paste data from Excel link" on the left under the Data Tab, paste and load. Then choose histogram under the Graph tab. It plots the X var (ignores Y). Sorry it's a bit shabby, I haven't w…
Nice app! Computing the histogram hung on the Apple stock data for me.
Thanks! It gets hung sometimes, but it should work if you select any field other than the Date as the X variable. Refresh and try again if you like.
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#35Since each list is independent, sort them individually and graph them.
Here's the result in Excel: http://ii.snag.gy/vSt4H.jpg
Alison's lists are A, D and E
Charlie's lists are B, C and F
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#36I would use my right hand to slap Alison and Charlie and get them to do their work again... this time forcing them to label their samples. I would then take them into my office and hold an inquest on how two completely different data-sets got mixed up in the first place. At which point I would probably find out Alison and Charlie have been knocking boots on company time.. Alison and Charlie would then be fired as thi…
You're on the management fast track aren't you ?
I probably would be if I spent less time writing fictional stories to accompany math problems. ^^
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#37I would use the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Smirnov_test
It's in scipy.stats.ks_2samp
Results:
Sets| D |p-value
-----------------
A,C |0.275|0.080|
B,C |0.175|0.531|
-----------------
A,D |0.125|0.893|
B,D |0.275|0.080|
-----------------
A,E |0.100|0.983|
B,E |0.300|0.043|
-----------------
A,F |0.300|0.043|
B,F |0.100|0.983|
-----------------
As far as the test goes, if D is small and p is high, you cannot reject the hypothesis that the two datasets came from the same distribution. The p-value is roughly how often, randomly you would get similar looking data assuming the null hypothesis (in this case that they are drawn from the same dataset)
In light of this evidence, if they are not lying to us, and really each of these sets came from and A-like or B-like distribution, I'd say fairly confidently that:
F is B-like
E is A-like
D is A-like and
C is B-like (though with lower confidence)
The box-plot: http://i.imgur.com/epPw7.png seems to confirm.
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#38Since each list is independent, sort them individually and graph them. Here's the result in Excel: http://ii.snag.gy/vSt4H.jpg Alison's lists are A, D and E Charlie's lists are B, C and F
Holy cow, I did the exact same thing as you!
For the sake of completeness, my first steps before sorting and plotting were to:
1. take the mean, median and mode of each set,
2. try and fail to use more sophisticated statistical analysis [1],
3. have a look at the minimum and maximum value for each set.
[1] In fact, could anyone point me to a refresher? I'm talking about distribution curves, regression, that kind of thing. I seem to have lost hang of it — couldn't pass my own "5 minutes to implement the simple thing" criterion.
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#39Bash for i in {1..6}; do COL='$'$i; awk -F, "{delta = $COL - avg; avg += delta / NR; mean2 += delta * ($COL - avg); } END { print sqrt(mean2 / NR); }" list.csv; done [troll]
Troll... or hero?
Re: What tool would *you* use to solve this?
#40PEOPLE!!! Are you hackers or not!?!? Download the Excel spreadsheet and look at the raw numbers. The numbers in columns A,D and E have 2 significant digits after the decimal point, whereas the numbers in columns B,C and F have 13 significant digits after decimal point! No calculations necessary!