Question

can the "average" plus one standard deviation be greater than 100%?
for example : the employment rate for students is 97% with a SD of 5. Is this possible? It does not say it is normal distrubution.

Answer 1

how di you get the std div?

Answer 2

the mean is 50% of the data; and 1sd from the mean contains 34% of the data or so

Answer 3

I received it from an organization but I think this is impossible, therefore their data is inaccurate.

Answer 4

what is the type of distribution? normal, poisson, etc

Answer 5

they reported the mean employment rate is 97% with a standard deviation of 5%. I told them that is impossible to have one SD be greater than 100%.

Answer 6

They could not answer that but we assume normal

Answer 7

it looks like they are using proportion instead of mean .... but without knowing their processes its hard to reconsruct it

Answer 8

different schools submit their employment rate (approx 250) they give us the mean and the SD. It should be a normal dist.... correct?

Answer 9

they report 97% is the "average"

Answer 10

should be? no. Do not try to conform the data; let the data conform itself

Answer 11

amistre64: thanks so much for your help! Greatly appreciated.

Answer 12

yw, but i think satellite, or others might be more useful in this since they are more adept than i :)

Answer 13

@satellite73

Answer 14

sorry i an statistically challenged

Answer 15

http://stattrek.com/hypothesis-test/proportion.aspx

if your able to parse this, it might be useful

Answer 16

relative standard deviation is usually expressed in percentages .... from the wiki

Answer 17

ok, I believe this is normal dist. all schools reported their employment rates. We are not using a probability in this case.

Answer 18

RSD = sd/mean

sd = RSD*mean, in this case; sd = .0485

if they are relaying a relative standard deviation