PSYC 2002 Lecture 8: Probability

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2002
• Professor: Logan John

Document Summary

Outline: preliminaries to inferential statistics: relation of probability to random sampling, probability and frequency distributions, normal distribution, z-scores, decision making the risks and rewards of sampling. Samples and their populations: 2000 us presidential election; florida vote count. You can"t call up every person above the age of (cid:887)8 in florida to ask who they are going to vote for. Sampling: risks: sample might not represent the larger population, may not know that the sample is misleading, possibility of inaccurate conclusions, might make decisions based on this inaccurate information. Sampling: rewards: the sample represents the larger population. Increase level of confidence in findings: reach accurate conclusions at low cost, remain open-minded because we know samples can mislead us, better decisions based on the available evidence. When you use this kind of sampling, there is a bias because there is a certain kind of person to volunteer for things.