Statistical terms and symbols

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Statistical terms and symbols
Message posted by Dave Wentz on October 30, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

I am 48 years old, and have not taken a mathmatics course in over thiry five years. I am now enrolled in a required basic statistics course, and I find a great deal of difficulty in rembering what all the statistical symbols mean.

I am stumped on m the greek letter mu.

I aslo need to now what you would call a connection whtat appears to be related but really are not.

Any help anyone could give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)

Re: Statistical terms and symbols
Message posted by JG on October 31, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

You need to buy or get from the library one or two very elementary statistics books. You may also consider used books especially those periodically disposed of by most libraries.

Mu is usually the symbol for the true value of the arithmetic mean - which is one type of average. X-bar is the usual symbol for the sample value of the mean.

You other question I think refers to the fact that correlation does not imply causality. Also zero correlation does not imply independence.

Re: Statistical terms and symbols
Message posted by your friend on November 1, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

I just happen to have a stats book from a class I took a few years ago that had the definition that I'm sure you are looking for:
The greek letter mu stands for "population mean."

Re: Statistical terms and symbols
Message posted by another friend on November 1, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

your second question - the answer = "spurious relationship"

Re: Statistical terms and symbols
Message posted by Vern Myers on November 3, 1999 at 12:00 AM (ET)

This may be of interest: Generally sample statistics use Roman letters, and population parameters Greek letters. Hence, "X bar" for the sample average and "mu" for the population mean; "s" for sample standard deviation and "sigma" for population standard deviation.

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