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MINISTAT(1)		    General Commands Manual		   MINISTAT(1)

NAME
       ministat	-- statistics utility

SYNOPSIS
       ministat	 [-Anqs]  [-C  column]	[-c  confidence_level]	[-d delimiter]
		[-w [width]] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
       The ministat command calculates fundamental statistical	properties  of
       numeric	data in	the specified files or,	if no file is specified, stan-
       dard input.

       The options are as follows:

       -A	   Just	report the statistics of the input and	relative  com-
		   parisons, suppress the ASCII-art plot.

       -n	   Just	 report	 the raw statistics of the input, suppress the
		   ASCII-art plot and the relative comparisons.

       -q	   Suppress printing of	summary	statistics and data-set	names;
		   typically for use alongside -n.

       -s	   Print the average/median/stddev bars	on separate  lines  in
		   the ASCII-art plot, to avoid	overlap.

       -C column   Specify  which column of data to use.  By default the first
		   column in the input file(s) are used.

       -c confidence_level
		   Specify desired confidence level for	Student's T  analysis.
		   Possible values are 80, 90, 95, 98, 99 and 99.5 %

       -d delimiter
		   Specifies the column	delimiter characters, default is SPACE
		   and TAB.  See strtok(3) for details.

       -w width	   Width  of ASCII-art plot in characters.  The	default	is the
		   terminal width, or 74 if standard output is not a terminal.

       A sample	output could look like this:

	       $ ministat -s -w	60 iguana chameleon
	       x iguana
	       + chameleon
	       +------------------------------------------------------------+
	       |x      *  x	       *      +		     + x	   +|
	       | |________M______A_______________|			    |
	       |	     |________________M__A___________________|	    |
	       +------------------------------------------------------------+
		   N	    Min	       Max     Median	     Avg       Stddev
	       x   7	     50	       750	  200	     300    238.04761
	       +   5	    150	       930	  500	     540    299.08193
	       No difference proven at 95.0% confidence

       If ministat tells you, as in the	example	above, that there is  no  dif-
       ference proven at 95% confidence, the two data sets you gave it are for
       all statistical purposes	identical.

       You  have  the  option of lowering your standards by specifying a lower
       confidence level:

	       $ ministat -s -w	60 -c 80 iguana	chameleon
	       x iguana
	       + chameleon
	       +------------------------------------------------------------+
	       |x      *  x	       *      +		     + x	   +|
	       | |________M______A_______________|			    |
	       |	     |________________M__A___________________|	    |
	       +------------------------------------------------------------+
		   N	    Min	       Max     Median	     Avg       Stddev
	       x   7	     50	       750	  200	     300    238.04761
	       +   5	    150	       930	  500	     540    299.08193
	       Difference at 80.0% confidence
		     240 +/- 212.215
		     80% +/- 70.7384%
		     (Student's	t, pooled s = 264.159)

       But a lower standard does not make your data any	better,	and the	 exam-
       ple  is only included here to show the format of	the output when	a sta-
       tistical	difference is proven according to Student's T method.

SEE ALSO
       Any mathematics text on basic statistics, for instances	Larry  Gonicks
       excellent  "Cartoon Guide to Statistics"	which supplied the above exam-
       ple.

HISTORY
       The ministat command was	written	by Poul-Henning	Kamp out  of  frustra-
       tion  over all the bogus	benchmark claims made by people	with no	under-
       standing	of the importance of uncertainty and statistics.

       From FreeBSD 5.2	it has lived in	the source tree	as a  developer	 tool,
       graduating to the installed system from FreeBSD 8.0.

FreeBSD	13.2		       November	10, 2012		   MINISTAT(1)

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | HISTORY

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