Settlements in egympt before the time of the pharaohs are datedby measureing the

Question

Settlements in egympt before the time of the pharaohs are datedby measureing the presence of forms of carbon that decay over time.The first dating of settlements in the nagada region used hair thathad been excavated 60 years earlier. Now researchers have usednewer methods and more recently excavated material. Do the datesdiffer? Here is the conclusion about one location: "There are twodates from Site KH6. Statistically, the two dates are notsignificantly differnt. They provide a weighted average correcteddate of 3715 +or- 90 B.C." Explain to someone interested inancient egypt but not interested in statistics what "notsignificantly different" means.

Explanation / Answer

When dealing with questions that do not have definite answers there is always a degree of uncertainty. To say that two things are not siginificantly different means two things. Firstly, a standard deviation is essentially what you mean when you say give or take a few. It is your degree of uncertainty. So, if one persons prediction is 20, give or take 3(standard deviation of 3) it means that if you were to conduct your own study and find an average of 18, it is still the same as the other persons prediction of 20. Secondly, not significantly different means that two values are not different if you factor out any variation due to chance, which again is the reason why there is a standard deviation. So in context of those dates in the example, there is no difference in the prediction of dates if you factor our and variation due to chance or uncertaintiy of the statistical method itself.

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