On the accuracy of monthly means

Abstract

The errors involved in estimating mean values from data collected over the ocean have been considered in a number of recent papers. In these, errors have been investigated by taking a random sample, size n, many times, from hourly data collected by buoys and fitting curves to the empirical confidence limits obtained as a function of n. In this paper it is shown that this is unnecessary: an analytical solution can be obtained to this problem by considering the statistics. Results which assume independence can be misleading. -from Authors