Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 14:54:04 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: John C Levine Subject: Re: Species Measurements in Bird Guides MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elise, It is back to that question -- What average is one talking about. The median, mean, mode. The middle number in a series, the middle of the "average" as we normally use it, and the most frequent number. So it comes down to how many of the birds are outside of the 17" measurement and how many birds were included in the measurement and which definition are you using. Recently, I did this run on a series of 265 numbers and had a median of 355, mean of 215, and mode of 185. Great birding and find that next lifer, John (One of Birders2) John + Irma = 2, we are birders, too. John C. Le Vine Birders2@aol.com --- Los Angeles, CA -*-*-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Evolutions works on percentages, not guarantees From Bernd Heinrich "A Year in the Maine Woods" 1996 -*-*-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================