PSYO 271 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Frequency Distribution, Descriptive Statistics, Central Tendency

• School: UBC Okanagan, UBC OK
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYO 271
• Professor: Jan Cioe

Document Summary

Lots of data and so need to summarize: descriptive statistics summarize, measures of central tendency, measures of variability. Variability: scores/measurement values obtained: graphs; visual display, less info lost compared to statistics. Frequency distributions: often used for constructing graphs, frequency distributions. Series of numbers difficult to digest: rank order values, repeated values. Frequency distribution gets around redundancy of listing identical scores: tabular presentation, two columns, two reasons for constructing frequency distributions, simple visual analysis, calculating statistics. Seldom necessary now: value not obtained, put in zero, but few scores are extreme. Break table: prefer consecutive scores, discrete; continuous variables, continuous, but we use whole numbers to simplify. Fraction of step: less than half, more than half. 6. 15-6. 25: how many measurement units in a step interval, somewhat arbitrary, but some issues to consider, compressing distribution, aka grouping, especially useful with wide data range, how many intervals, mccalls table and method.