[RASMB] averages from SV

Peter Schuck pschuck at helix.nih.gov
Mon Jan 30 16:35:24 PST 2006


Although I consider myself passionate at times about science, it wasn't 
my intention to trash anyone. As this is an open forum for discussion, 
my intentions are to address scientific problems with honesty, 
transparency, and the best possible solution.  I certainly also didn't 
want to sell anything (my programs are free for all, and you won't find 
any report of sn or sz averages in them).  As I tried to explain, the 
problems with these averages occur with every method where a single 
species produces a smooth function, and they strongly diminish anytime 
you get baseline-separated peaks.

One last comment - there are certainly many publications (including some 
of my own) using *weight* averages, which I tried to make abundantly 
clear are thermodynamically completely rigorous and can be analyzed 
perfectly well for interacting or non-interacting systems.  However, I'm 
not aware of a single one using number-averages, z-averages, or z+1 
averages derived from integration of sedimentation coefficient 
distributions for quantitative analysis (the closest to this is perhaps 
a manuscript in preparation I seem to remember being cited by Jack 
Correia in his review).

Peter







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