Hi Kids,
The final bike count report I came up with was:
3120 bikes, 169 people reporting = my simple average of 18.46 bikes per person.
But a more formal assessment using raw numbers (no names of course), which I provided to our esteemed co-lister Harvey Sachs, yielded the following much more interesting statistical information:
>167 unique and useful responses.* 10 is the median number of bikes reported in a correspondent's collection.** That is, half the respondents had 10 bikes or fewer, and half had 10 or more. I have a hunch this will give "cover" to a fair number of people who differ from their spouses on the optimum size of a collection. :-)
2 reported 100 or more bikes (105, 300)
11 reported 50 - 99 bikes.
7 reported 40 - 49
7 reported 30 - 39
18 reported 20 - 29
15 reported 15 - 19
29 reported 10 - 19
46 reported 5 - 9, making that group the most common collection size.
33 reported 1 - 4 bikes
>I'd be happy to provide the data in Excel form to anyone who asks, and have attached it for you, too.
>Harvey Sachs
>McLean VA
>*There were a few other entries marked "add on" that did not refer to specific entries, so I couldn't use them. The one entry of 22 marked "add to 50" was included. The other six "add on" probably make little difference for our purposes.
>** For the Wonks, the "mean" was almost twice as high as the median, indicating a strongly skewed (non-Gaussian) distribution. This means, among other things, that the arithmetic "standard deviation" is meaningless, and not reported. Wow, does that sound official, or what? :-) Your mileage may vary.
End Quote. If you want the Excel spreadsheet, Harvey's email address is: sachs@erols.com
Very, very best holiday wishes to you all,
Paulie Davis
Los Angeles, California