What is the best statistical method for quantifying wastewater quality - (Apr/19/2012 )
hobglobin on Sat May 17 13:23:57 2014 said:
what exactly your research questions and hypotheses are and what you measured how often, it's difficult to suggest something. What DRT suggested is good to find out if a series of measurements has a correlation over time i.e. to find possible relations between measurements at different time points (autocorrelation).
To compare standards with your measurements you can most easily do a t-test (but the data have to fulfil some requirements such as normal distribution), and you need of course means and not single measurements (not sure if you have sufficient replications). There are some non-parametric alternatives too.
To compare over seasons for trends you might use the seasonal Kendall trend test
Hypotheses :- poorly treated wastewater are source of pathogens to the environment
Objectives:- to evaluate the compliance of the treatment plants to the set standards
to evaluate the efficiency of the treatment plants
to compare two outflow points (final effluent and discharge point)
to compare the two wastewater treatment plants to determine which plant is more functional
to determine the presence of feacal coliform and enteric viruses in the final treated wastewater
12 phyiscochemical parameters were measured (pH, free chlorine, turbidity etc), all readings were done in triplicates.. Sampling was done for 12 months.
In light of the above, are those statistical analysis recommended still applicable?
Thank you
DRT on Thu May 15 21:15:01 2014 said:
A couple of statistical methods you might find useful to look into are autocorrelation and control charts.
HI, going by the objectives stated below, is this analysis still applicable?
Thank you
Osu on Sat May 17 23:04:00 2014 said:
DRT on Thu May 15 21:15:01 2014 said:
A couple of statistical methods you might find useful to look into are autocorrelation and control charts.
HI, going by the objectives stated below, is this analysis still applicable?
Thank you
These methods don’t test the difference between treatments. Like Hobglobin suggested, the simplest method is the t-test; maybe a paired t-test if your treatments were sampled at the same times.
I pictured that the final section of your report you would recommend suitable ‘Control Chart’ parameters that the wastewater plants could implement in their quality control.
Thank you DRT, God bless