faiblement dispersé autour de la moyenne

English translation: laying/falling close to the mean/narrowly distributed about the mean

GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)

French term or phrase:	faiblement dispersé autour de la moyenne
English translation:	laying/falling close to the mean/narrowly distributed about the mean
Entered by:	Scott de Lesseps

04:54 Oct 10, 2016

French to English translations [PRO]
Bus/Financial - Mathematics & Statistics

French term or phrase: faiblement dispersé autour de la moyenne

le PIB de la RDC a représenté en moyenne annuelle 12,8 milliards de dollars des
Etats-Unis entre 1960 et 2008, après avoir atteint un maximum de 19 milliards de
dollars en 1987. Il a été faiblement dispersé autour de la moyenne ;

The text later on also mentions, for exports and imports, "très peu dispersées" and "fortement dispersées" both before "autour de la moyenne".

I'm thinking of something along the lines of "narrowly distributed around the mean".

Scott de Lesseps KudoZ activity Questions: 475 (none open) (3 without valid answers) (21 closed without grading) Answers: 2 United States
Local time: 20:57

laying/falling close to the mean

Explanation:
It may be better to change the sentence structure to talk about the values being close to the mean or not. Otherwise I think your suggestion of distribution works well. If you were talking about correlation in a scatter diagram then I think 'scatter' or 'spread' would work equally well.

Selected response from:

Holly-Anne Whyte
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:57

Grading comment

I decided to go with "narrowly distributed about the mean", but this answer seems to be the closest to that, so I'm picking yours, Holly-Anne. Thanks to everyone for all the answers and all the comments.
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

Summary of answers provided

4 +1

with a small standard deviation around the mean

Claude B

3 +1

laying/falling close to the mean

Holly-Anne Whyte

with small scatter around the mean

M.A.B.

ranging closely around the average

Wendy Streitparth

Discussion entries: 10

DLyons

Ireland

@Chris

09:38 Oct 12, 2016

"Low variability" seems to me the most natural way to express the sense. Maybe in later phrases "dispersion" is appropriate, but here it just feels slightly out of place (and "scatter" even more so). "Standard deviation" is of course technically correct, but IMO not contextually so.

chris collister

France

@ Donal

10:52 Oct 11, 2016

IMO, your suggestion strays a bit too far from the text, especially given the later occurrences of "dispersées".

DLyons

Ireland

10:42 Oct 11, 2016

It's descriptive rather than technical text. "Over this period, it had low variability".

chris collister

France

See:

16:08 Oct 10, 2016

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_dispersion

Scott de Lesseps

United States

ASKER

16:07 Oct 10, 2016

Thanks for all the comments. Chris, I was unsure about "weakly dispersed about the mean". It sounded a abit strange to me, but then I'm not in expert in the field of Statistics. I appreciate the feedback.

M.A.B.

Poland

15:29 Oct 10, 2016

Anyway, "scatter" is what is often used.
Regarding around / about: here it's "around"
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/sm1/lectures/node18.ht...

chris collister

France

13:22 Oct 10, 2016

If we are to split hairs, the usual terminology is "about the mean" rather than "around".

Didier Fourcot

mathematical wording or not?

10:04 Oct 10, 2016

French does not seem so scientific, the meaning is that the different values along the years are respectively rather close, very close or rather far from the computed average; this could be all what the reader wants to know.

"dispersé" could suggest a statistical wording, refering to the concept of "dispersion statistique":
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_statistique
however there is no specific concept of average deviation, MAD, standard deviation or variance, so I doubt that you have to use the concept of "statistical dispersion" in target text, not to mention other mathematical concepts that are definitely not in source

BrigitteHilgner

Austria

closely distributed around the mean

06:29 Oct 10, 2016

would be my choice
See:
http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/esh/numeracy/breakout6.html

Tony M

France

@ Asker

05:24 Oct 10, 2016

Not being an expert in the field, I think your 'narrowly' sounds reasonable to me — though it may be a word to use with caution, in view of its other common usage "narrowly escaped death" etc.
Just one thought, that might help with some instances: I often find that certain expressions in FR are better 'turned round' to be a negative in EN; so for example, 'peu' might become 'not much'; this can be a useful technique for getting myself out of a hole ;-)

I also wonder if here you might want to consider the possibility of using 'distributed' — cf. statistical expressions like 'normal distribution' etc.

Answers

1 hr confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

with a small standard deviation around the mean

Explanation:
Using statistical jargon (see links below for details in French and English).
But it may be too technical in this context?

"A large standard deviation indicates that the data points can spread far from the mean and a small standard deviation indicates that they are clustered closely around the mean."

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cart_type
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

Claude B
France
Local time: 02:57
Works in field
Native speaker of: French
PRO pts in category: 4

2 hrs confidence:

ranging closely around the average

Explanation:
Nitrate in KWBC exhibited a low variability (RSD = 6%), ranging closely around the average of 6.9 mg/L.

http://www.water.ca.gov/swp/waterquality/docs/Annual Pumpins...

or just "ranging around the average"

Wendy Streitparth
Germany
Local time: 02:57
Native speaker of: English

7 hrs confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

laying/falling close to the mean

Holly-Anne Whyte
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:57
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 4

Grading comment

5 hrs confidence:

with small scatter around the mean

Explanation:
I think "scatter" could be the right word here.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 10 godz. (2016-10-10 15:29:46 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

We now know how to define the mean value of the general variable $u$. But, how can we characterize the scatter around the mean value? We could investigate the deviation of $u$ from its mean value $\bar{u}$, which is denoted
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/sm1/lectures/node18.ht...

M.A.B.
Poland
Local time: 02:57
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

Polish
PRO pts in category: 4

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faiblement dispersé autour de la moyenne

English translation: laying/falling close to the mean/narrowly distributed about the mean

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faiblement dispersé autour de la moyenne

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