Solved – When reporting mean values should the standard error be included

meanstandard deviationstandard error

I'm trying to understand when to report the standard error.

When reporting results in a scientific paper or essay, should any mean values also have the standard error reported alongside?

For example, let's say you measure the amount of toys a child buys each week over a year. You decide to calculate monthly averages. Should you also calculate the standard error and report this alongside?

Such as "In January the monthly mean of toys bought were 4 (+/- 0.7)"

Example Dataset

Toys Bought each week
Week 1: 4
Week 2: 3
Week 3: 4
Week 4: 1
Monthly average: 3
Standard Deviation: 1.41421
Standard Error: 0.707106781187

Summary Question

Should you always report the standard error when reporting a mean value, or is the standard error only applicable to certain things?

Best Answer

It is good practice to report some measure of variability with any result. It does not really matter whether you report the standard deviation, the standard error, a confidence interval as the reader can convert between them as long as s/he knows the sample size. You do not say exactly which field of science you work in but there is probably a convention which it is best to follow so as not to annoy the reader.

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