PSYC 3170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Statistical Inference, Confounding, Descriptive Statistics
17 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
Chapter #1 introduction to statistics and research design. Two branches of statistics: descriptive statistics organize, and communicates numerical information (sample, inferential statistics use sample data to make general estimate about the larger population (population) Population is the complete set of the individuals, events, or data in which we are interested. Sample is a set of observations drawn from the populations; this is where descriptive statistics are typically applied. Variables observations of physical, attitudinal, and behavioural characteristic that can take on different values. Discrete variables take on only specific values with no possible intervening values: nominal variable where values represent a category, ordinal ranking of data but intervals may be unequal; Continuous variables take on a large range of values including decimals: interval number with equally spaced intervals. There is no true 0 point: ratio like interval but has a meaningful 0 point. Goal of research is to understand the relationships among variable. Independent variable the variable you manipulate or categorize.
