Hi everybody,
 
Suppose I have continuous measurements of an energy waveform that is sampled 
discretely for different heights every 0.5m. Let's say I want to find out the 
height for which I have equal amount of energy above and below. 
My colleague did the following:

a. calculate the cumulative sum of the energy
b. calculate the median of the cumulative energy
c. find out what is the height for which this median corresponds.
 
My take on this is: Since the heights are already sorted from min to max, and 
the cumulative energy is by default sorted from min to max …. it does not 
matter if I calculate the median of the cumulative energy and see which height 
it belongs to when I can calculate directly the median of the height and get 
actually same result. I think the same holds if I calculate any other quantile 
if I am interested in the corresponding height of that cumulative energy 
quantile.
 
I did some simulations to see if this is true, and I have simulated the energy 
values as a random sample of a normal distribution, gamma, f distribution or 
random sample of a combination of normal and gamma distributions. My question 
is: do any of you know of any reference that proves that? Paper, math property 
of already ordered sequences, anything to prove that this is not just a 
coincidence?
 
Following is an example, with n = 15 just for convenience to see with "naked 
eye" which value should be the median (I will also use only examples from a 
normal distribution, but the results prove the same does not matter which 
distribution I use for energy)
 
### code starts
 
set.seed = 123
xn <- rnorm(15)
xn <- xn+3   #to have only positive numbers
yn <- seq(1, 8, 0.5)
zn <- cumsum(xn)
dfn <- data.frame(energy = xn, elevation = yn, cum.energ = zn)
percent <- apply(dfn,2, function(x) quantile(x, probs = c(0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 
0.95)))
percent
dfn
f <- approxfun(yn, zn)
f(percent[1,2])
 
## code ends
 
As you can see quantiles for the cumulative energy corresponds to the 
respective quantiles of elevation, but quantiles of the energy waveform itself 
correspond to different heights than the elevation quantiles. Any help for 
references will be very much appreciated.  
 
Thanks for any help,
 
Monica
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