PSYC 2002 Lecture 1: Introduction to Statistics January 6

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

Document Summary

Statistics is a research tool for evaluating data. A definition of statistics: statistics refers to a range of techniques and procedures for analyzing, interpreting, displaying, and making decisions based on data. Kinds of statistics: descriptive statistics summary of measurements (for example, the average) Inferential statistics enable inferences to be drawn from data (did the results happen by chance and can the results be generalized) If the individuals were randomly assigned to the groups then it is possible to choose between these alternatives. Generalization: would a set of results hold if another group of participants were used, sample subset of individuals from a larger group, population the set of all individuals that have some characteristic. Interpretation of statistical information must account for possible violations of assumptions, such as non random assignment, non random sampling, etc: use appropriate statistics, understand how robust a statistic is when its assumptions are violated.