[R] Measuring dispersion

[Moshe Olshansky]

You could also look at the difference between your empirical distribution and the uniform distribution (something like Kolmogorov-Smirnov test).


--- On Tue, 17/6/08, S. Nunes <snunes at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: S. Nunes <snunes at gmail.com>
> Subject: [R] Measuring dispersion
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Received: Tuesday, 17 June, 2008, 7:56 PM
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for a function to measure the dispersion of
> a set of
> values ranging from 0 to 1.
> This function should be 0 if all the values are evenly
> spaced within
> the interval and it should be > 0 if values are
> clustered.
> The more clustered the values are, the higher should the
> function be.
> 
> An example:
> 
> [0; 0.2; 0.4; 0.6; 0.8; 1] - function should be ~ 0
> [0; 0.1; 0.1; 0.15; 1] - function should be > 1
> 
> This data comes from time-dependent observations recorded
> between a
> start time (0) and an end time (1).
> I want to find out which series are more clustered, i.e.
> less evenly
> distributed.
> 
> I'm going to test Kurtosis for this but it doesn't
> seem to be the best
> tool for the job.
> As I understand, Kurtosis evaluates the
> "strength" of a single central
> peak. My data can have multiple peaks (clusters).
> 
> Thanks in advance for your comments,
> --
> Sérgio Nunes
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained,
> reproducible code.