PSYC 406 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Statistical Inference, Descriptive Statistics, Intellectual Disability

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 406
• Professor: David Vachon

Document Summary

Module 1. 3: norms and stats: stats why do we need them, descriptive statistics, used to summarize and describe information about a sample from a study. Inferential statistics go one step further than descriptive statistics. Large n the bigger the sample, the closer our values will be to the population. Representative sample the more our sample reflects the target population, the more we can infer from it. Good measurement if we use bad measures, the values we get from the sample will poorly reflect the samples" data (like a foggy mirror), and inferences will suffer. You don"t really understand what"s going on. Means will flip around a lot when using small groups. Means between studies will move around a lot. Because n is higher, you can have more confidence on the averages. Won"t need to do as many studies, even though the groups are small. The difference is big enough to feel confident.