Re: Problem and solution: Patch for new "stats" command

[ZoltánVörös <zv...@gm...>]

Philipp K. Janert <janert <at> ieee.org> writes:

> 
> On Monday 09 November 2009 07:29:10 am Jonathan Thornburg wrote:
> > On Mon, 9 Nov 2009, Philipp K. Janert wrote:
> > > There was a question whether the stats command
> > > works on "a sample or a population". Neither!
> > > It works on a a DATA FILE, like the rest of gnuplot.
> > > (And therefore there is no ambiguity.)
> >
> > I'm sorry, but I still don't know whether this means it uses N or N-1
> > weighting.  I would find it useful to have *both* printed out -- each is
> > valuable in different circumstances.
> 
> I see. That makes more sense.
> 
> Currently, the stats command divides by N.

I don't really see the difference: since the sum of whatever quantity you want
is reported, as is the number of records, you can define either sum_x / records
or sum_x / (records-1). Similar argument applies to the standard deviations and
the like. I don't want to add new variables for quantities that can easily be
calculated from existing ones. 
Best,
Zoltán