The ripple index (RI) is a common metric in the study of bedforms. In this work we review the application of RI to aeolian megaripples and perform a statistical analysis of field measurements. The research highlights ambiguity in how RI is calculated and used to describe and infer bedform morphometry. The statistical analysis demonstrates that although the prevailing application of RI encourages an interpretation as a deterministic quantity, it is in fact a stochastic variable with large variance and several use cases. RI can be used as an individual descriptive statistic, an aggregated descriptive statistic, or a linear predictor. We develop a simple linear model to investigate the notion of a representative RI value for megaripples. We find a value of 17.3 as a linear predictor for individual megaripples and a value of 17.6 as a linear predictor for aggregated megaripples, but show that the large variance observed in megaripple morphology mean that interpreting these values as representative of all megaripples can be misleading. This empirical finding of large variance in megaripple RI values aligns with recent work showing that megaripples are highly variable bedforms. Broadly, we recommend that all research involving RI should use it in an appropriate individual or aggregated data context and present these data with measures of dispersion.