I have a question about the steel ball/marble experiment
that we did today. How would you calculate the distance
from the mean position if the mean of the positions is -.14,
and the position was -0.6? If the mean of positions is -.14
and the position is +0.3? I was a little confused on how
you determined when to add the mean and when to subtract it
to get the distance from the mean.
As I often do, I'll first answer your question with another question.
If the temperature is 14 below zero today and 60 below zero tomorrow, how much change is there in the temperature?
If the temperature is 14 below zero today and 30 above zero tomorrow, how much change is there in the temperature?
Now for a more-or-less straight answer:
The distance from one position to another is the magnitude of the change in position. So the distance from position x1 to position x2 is | x2 - x1 |.
So the distance from position -0.14 cm to -0.6 cm is | 0.6 cm - (-0.14 cm) | = | 0.6 cm + 0.14 cm | = .74 cm.
However note that the 0.6 cm is accurate only to the nearest .1 cm, so the correct result to report for that distance is .7 cm.