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Talk:Central tendency
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How much detail should this article go into? How much should be left for other resources? WP identifies the following 8 as "basic" measures of central tendency:
- Arithmetic mean
- Geometric mean
- Harmonic mean
- Midrange
- Median
- Mode
- Truncated mean
- Weighted mean
I see we have covered three of them (arithmetic mean, median and mode). Should we cover the others? And I'm sure, if one researches the issue, one could find more than the 8 which WP mentions. (((Zack Martin)))™ 23:16, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
They should really all be mentioned, but I'm off to bed now, so if anyone wants it done tonight, they had best do it themselves. Besides, there are several editors here who are very mathematically competent, so I'd be surprised if someone doesn't clean this up overnight. --Danfly (talk) 23:27, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
- Well, that's my question really, should they be? Should this place aim to equal WP, or hey what about MathWorld or PlanetMath, in its maths content? Or just cover topics which are somehow relevant to other points of discussion? I am sure a lot of editors could add a lot of heavy maths content to this site, should we all just fire away? How about we add articles on the following: Hyperreal numbers, Dual numbers, Surreal numbers, Quaternions, Octonions, Sedenions, Cayley–Dickson construction, Hypercomplex numbers, Superreal numbers, p-adic numbers, Supernatural numbers, Definable real number, Constructible number... Any objections? (((Zack Martin)))™ 23:36, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
- There's no need to get too far ahead of ourselves. We hardly need an article on every mathematical concept we can think of. However, I would suggest that ANYTHING related directly to statistics is fair game, since we all know how statistics are manipulated regularly. As a general rule of thumb, I would say most things relating to probability and game theory are also relevant to the mission, since they're also pervasive in arguments concerning just about anything. Physics maths also belong for the sake of saying 'this how things actually work as opposed to how Dr. Woomeister says it works'. I would consider a concept like hyperreal numbers to be of minimal importance by comparison. i think we should just prioritise and debate the more abstract concepts when we have built up the things of obvious importance. I would be inclined to make articles for binomial, Poisson and normal distributions first before beginning anything you mentioned above. --Danfly (talk) 23:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
- Well, if you want to cover statistics or physics, real analysis (aka calculus) is important to both, so it should be covered. And non-standard analysis claims to be more intuitive than standard analysis, so it should be covered too. And hyperreal numbers are foundational to non-standard analysis, so let's include them also. Hey, everybody, let's play the Kevin Bacon game — mathematics style! (((Zack Martin)))™ 00:26, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
- There's no need to get too far ahead of ourselves. We hardly need an article on every mathematical concept we can think of. However, I would suggest that ANYTHING related directly to statistics is fair game, since we all know how statistics are manipulated regularly. As a general rule of thumb, I would say most things relating to probability and game theory are also relevant to the mission, since they're also pervasive in arguments concerning just about anything. Physics maths also belong for the sake of saying 'this how things actually work as opposed to how Dr. Woomeister says it works'. I would consider a concept like hyperreal numbers to be of minimal importance by comparison. i think we should just prioritise and debate the more abstract concepts when we have built up the things of obvious importance. I would be inclined to make articles for binomial, Poisson and normal distributions first before beginning anything you mentioned above. --Danfly (talk) 23:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)