- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 10:19:42 -0800
- To: Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net>
- Cc: Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com>, "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>, Randy Edmunds <redmunds@adobe.com>
On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 12:04 AM, Florian Rivoal <florian@rivoal.net> wrote: >> On 26 Jan 2015, at 23:55, Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote: >> [...] >> the deviation from the average >> [...] > > Is this intentionally left vague, opening differences in terms of quality of implementation? That's not vague. Deviation is a numerical value that you can compare across lines. It's just linear difference. > I would clarify 'deviation' into 'standard deviation'. Compared to the mean absolute deviation, the std dev is preferable, as it punishes extreme values more. For example, on a four line block, if you have between each line being 1 character off the average, or 2 lines being exactly at the average and 2 lines being off by 2 characters, the standard deviation would prefer the first situation, while the mean absolute deviation would be indifferent. I agree that minimizing the squared deviation is better. It's almost always better for these kinds of "get close to the average" things. ~TJ
Received on Tuesday, 27 January 2015 18:20:28 UTC