Standard deviation, standard error. Which 'standard' should we use?
G. W. Brown
Standard deviation (SD) and standard error (SE) are quietly but extensively
used in biomedical publications. These terms and notations are used as
descriptive statistics (summarizing numerical data), and they are used as
inferential statistics (estimating population parameters from samples). I
review the use and misuse of SD and SE in several authoritative medical
journals and make suggestions to help clarify the usage and meaning of SD
and SE in biomedical reports.
