SOCSCI 2J03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Data Set, Royal Institute Of Technology, Weight Loss

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Social Sciences
• Course: SOCSCI 2J03
• Professor: Rizwan Tahir

Document Summary

Statistical methods: descriptive statistics, consists of methods for organizing, displaying, and describing data by using tables, graphs, and summary measures. Inferential statistics: utilizes sample data to make estimates, decisions, predictions, or other generalizations about a larger set of data. In most cases, the size of the population is quite large: cost, the cost of collecting information from all members of a population, impossibility of conducting a census. Designed experiment versus observational study: when the experimenter controls the (random) assignment of elements to different treatment groups, the study is said to be a designed experiment. In contrast, in an observational study the assignment of elements to different treatments is voluntary, and the experimenter simply observes the results of the study. Treatment group versus control group: the group of elements that receives a treatment is called the treatment group, and the group of elements that does not receive a treatment is called the control group.