Increasing volumes of of non-traditional stable isotope data have brought new opportunities to gain important insights into geochemical and planetary processes.However,there is a worrysome trend that the isotopic data...Increasing volumes of of non-traditional stable isotope data have brought new opportunities to gain important insights into geochemical and planetary processes.However,there is a worrysome trend that the isotopic data are interpreted in a fashion that its statistical approaches are chosen subjectively.This communication summarizes the rules regarding calculating the mean,standard deviation and relative standard deviation of a population,as well as error propagation and significant digits.These rules should be used when reporting geochemical data,especially for isotope ratios.Using two examples,I show that statistics matters in isotopic data interpretation.展开更多
文摘Increasing volumes of of non-traditional stable isotope data have brought new opportunities to gain important insights into geochemical and planetary processes.However,there is a worrysome trend that the isotopic data are interpreted in a fashion that its statistical approaches are chosen subjectively.This communication summarizes the rules regarding calculating the mean,standard deviation and relative standard deviation of a population,as well as error propagation and significant digits.These rules should be used when reporting geochemical data,especially for isotope ratios.Using two examples,I show that statistics matters in isotopic data interpretation.
