I'm not trying to follow the details here, but
I'm still puzzled by the over-arching question and curious
as to how this fits into any research project.
Let me guess that there are not only data for MI,
meaning Michigan, but also data for, or from, most if not all of the
other 49 states of the US (if not, it's hard to see
how the comparison is worthwhile). Then it's easy to
see that if you were especially interested in
Michigan you would want to know where it lies
in the distribution of values for the US (and
perhaps even -- gosh -- compare it with values for
elsewhere, unless this is some statistical
equivalent of those sporting "World Series" that do not
in fact include teams from outside the USA).
Why is the state mean vs other states mean comparison
the focus here? Setting aside the possibly awkward question of
how you think these two "samples" are generated, is this
really what other researchers want to know, given the
many other possibilities such as confidence intervals,
graphs, tables?
As said, just curious.
Nick
[email protected]
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