Try it on paper first. A hint, the key idea and the worked solution are here when you need them.
A weather station records the noon temperature on many days of a month. The mean is and the standard deviation is . A visitor from another country wants the figures in degrees Fahrenheit, using . A scientist also asks for them in kelvin, using . A student then computes the coefficient of variation of the temperature in each of the three scales and finds that the three answers are very different. She wonders whether the coefficient of variation says anything about how steady the temperature really is. Find the mean and the standard deviation in degrees Fahrenheit, and the coefficient of variation in degrees Celsius, in degrees Fahrenheit and in kelvin.
, and the smaller CV is the more consistent. For : and .
Have you tried it?
Work it out on paper first. It is fine to get stuck or make a mistake: that is how we learn. When you are ready, go through the solution one step at a time, and check each step against your own.
Step 1. Fahrenheit. The mean is . The standard deviation is . The shift does not enter the spread.
Step 2. Kelvin. The mean is . The standard deviation stays , because a kelvin and a degree Celsius are the same size.
Step 3. The three coefficients. In Celsius, . In Fahrenheit, . In kelvin, .
Answer: and . The coefficient of variation is , and in the three scales.
What it means. The same weather gives three different coefficients, because each scale puts its zero in a different place. A temperature on these scales has no true zero for "no heat" except kelvin, and even there the figure only tells the size of the spread against absolute temperature. So the coefficient of variation is not used for Celsius or Fahrenheit data.
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