phy 121
For the 2 ramps witht he marble here is the information I have. Centimeters:29.4, 29.5, 29.6, 29.7, 30.1, 30.15. Would the mean of these points be where the line is drawn, if the mean is 29.74? In the distance from the mean position I got .34, .24, .14, .04, -.36, -.41, is this correct.
You would get the mean position by adding up your six position measurements and dividing by 6. Your result 29.74 appears very plausible and I expect you did that correctly.
That expectation is confirmed by your stated displacements from the mean positions, which within roundoff error add up to 0. So I believe you've done this right.
The table below shows the calculation of the mean range (29.74 approx.), distances, squared distances, mean of squared distances and square root of mean of squared distances. We'll go over this in class tomorrow.
range dist sq dist
29.4 0.341666667 0.116736111
29.5 0.241666667 0.058402778
29.6 0.141666667 0.020069444
29.7 0.041666667 0.001736111
30.1 0.358333333 0.128402778
30.15 0.408333333 0.166736111
sum 178.45 0.492083333 sum of sq
mean 29.74166667 0.082013889 mean of sq
0.286380671 sqrt(mean of sq)
And I am not very sure about finding the mean of the distances from the mean, or determnining the square root. Just wanted to see if I was headed in the right direction before i finished all of them!