Solved – How to calculate the error of percentages

proportion;standard deviationstandard error

Is it correct to calculate the standard deviation of percentages/proportions as you would for four numbers (i.e. non-percentages)?


Thanks for your help @user2974951 @whuber and @asdf. Yes, you're right I was alluding to using the common SD formula. To explain further, my four percentages are from an experiment where we measured the uptake of a chemical by 4 plants. Each plant took up between 40% and 55% of what was applied, therefore the percentage can't ever be >100%. So, if I understand correctly I will need to use the proportion SD which is different to the common SD formula? Thanks for the link to the thread @user2974951

Best Answer

It depends. If you are just expressing a number that can take any value as a percent (for example, relative growth of number of sales), then go ahead! -15% is just -0.15, 133% is just 1.33 and so on.

However, if what you're dealing with is a proportion (as in "73% of students passed the test, ie: a value between 0% and 100%), then you should calculate standard deviation from the binomial distribution, in other words, for a population of n and a proportion of p (measured from 0 to 1), your variance is np(1-p), and your standard deviation is the square root of that number

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