Tang Li, Zhang Hui, Zhang Bo
Department of Biostatistics, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN 38105, U.S.A.
Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605, U.S.A.
J Pancreatol. 2019 Sep;2(3):69-71. doi: 10.1097/jp9.0000000000000024.
Standard deviation and standard error of the mean have been applied widely as error bars in scientific plots. Unfortunately, there is no universally accepted principle addressing which of these two measures should be used. Here we seek to fill this gap by outlining the reasoning for choosing standard error of the mean over standard deviation and hope to shed light on this unsettled disagreement among the biomedical community. The utility of standard error of the mean and standard deviation as error bars is further discussed by examining the figures and plots published in two research articles on pancreatic disease.
标准差和均值标准误差作为误差线在科学图表中被广泛应用。不幸的是，对于应该使用这两种度量中的哪一种，并没有一个被普遍接受的原则。在此，我们试图通过概述选择均值标准误差而非标准差的理由来填补这一空白，并希望能阐明生物医学界中这一尚未解决的分歧。通过研究两篇关于胰腺疾病的研究文章中发表的图表，进一步讨论了均值标准误差和标准差作为误差线的效用。
