Help Standardizing Data

montzarella

Hi,

I have a data table, see below. Its about utilisation numbers per year. So in the year 2005, we had 750 people, 561 users white and 422 users of black, in 2006 we had 5,084 people, 2,247 white and 2,638 black etc.

I have been asked to "standardize" the data based on the number of unique people each year. I understand what they are asking me to do, but I have never standardized data before.

I have seen the formula "standardize" but I am unsure what values to put where:

X - is the value i want to normalize
Mean - is the arithmetic mean of the distribution
Standard_dev - is the standard deviation of the distribution, a positive number

Can someone help me to try to understand how to complete the formula and what the X, Mean and Standard_Dev means?

2005 - White 561, Black 422
2006 - White 2,247, Black 2,638
2007 - White 5,988, Black 6,168
2008 - White 7,159, Blacl 5,303


No of Unique people per year
2005 750
2006 5084
2007 9898
2008 10502



Thanks in advance everyone

montzarella

anyone....?

Capt'n Midnight

Boards is not a "do my homework for me" site.

you'll get a lot more help if you show what you've tried

if using a spreadsheet like Lotus / Calc / Excel have a look at the help too.

Spreadsheets will calculate the results but they won't tell you what they did and you did ask to understand so I'm moving to maths. ( Researcher is another forum with statistics but usually more advanced )

montzarella

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Boards is not a "do my homework for me" site.

i didnt think it was. got it done in the end.

Capt'n Midnight

Good to hear.