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I am working with the data obtained from a travel survey from a town. I have the data from mean of trips made by different travel modes on the day of the survey. From a national suevey I have got data of total number of trips made by each travel mode for the towns with similar populations. Could you suggest a way to compare these two except calculating percentage of each mode across the five travel modes. Because the data from the town we conducted the survey is much smaller in numbers than than numbers from the national survey.

They look as follows 

Total number of trips weekdays 
in **low populated towns**            436000/   137000/ 39000/  88000/  225000
Average number of trip by each mode 
on day of survey in the  **town X**   126,6/      23,6/     2/      5/     34,8
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Why don't you want to use percentage? What's the goal of your analysis? – Peter Flom Aug 25 '11 at 10:25
I want to see if the travel pattern in the town x is different form travel pattern of townswith simillar population. for instance if the share of the travel mode "car as driver" is considerabely higher or lower than other cities. the numbers showed aboce are represtative for: car as drive/car as passenger/bus/bicycle/by foot . – Saeed Aug 25 '11 at 11:26
I want to see, for instance, if the share of the travel mode "car as driver" in town X is considerabely higher or lower than the other towns. the numbers showed above are representatives for: car as drive/car as passenger/bus/bicycle/by foot . I have calculated the percentage but it seems to me as it is the simplest way. the numbers of the low populated municipalities are estimated numbers for total number of trips mad by entire population of 37 towns while for the twon X the numbers represent mean of trips of each mode registered by the sample population. – Saeed Aug 25 '11 at 11:35

1 Answer

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If you want to see something about the share of travel mode in town X vs. the others, then I think proportion is what you want. Estimated numbers will be estimated numbers, no matter what you do to them. Maybe not "garbage in, garbage out" but "estimated numbers in, estimated numbers out"

Sometimes simple is good.

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