N50 describes a sequence length whereas L50 describes a number of sequences. What am really confused ...
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N50 is a statistic that is widely used to describe genome assemblies.
It describes an average length of a set of sequences, but the average is not the mean or median length. Rather it is the length of the sequence that takes the sum length of all sequences — when summing from longest to shortest — past 50% of the total size of the assembly.
N50 is a statistic that is widely used to describe genome assemblies.
It describes an average length of a set of sequences, but the average is not the mean or median length. Rather it is the length of the sequence that takes the sum length of all sequences — when summing from longest to shortest — past 50% of the total size of the assembly.
The reasons for using N50, rather than the mean or median length, is something that is discussed at http://www.acgt.me/blog/2013/7/8/why-is-n50-used-as-an-assembly-metric.html