POLI 380 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Descriptive Statistics, Central Tendency, Standard Deviation
Document Summary
Categorical variables can only be summarized by saying what proportion or percentage of cases fall into each other categories. Ordinal variables can be summarized like categorical variables or use means and measures of variance but you have to be very careful and tell your audience what the number represents. Continuous variables can be summarized with means, measures of variance, rank statistics, and even more complicated things like. Define distribution, identify the range of potential outcomes for a given variable and the frequency of actual outcomes in some data set. Draw and interpret a histogram, with pen and paper and software. Calculate and interpret the mean, median and mode of a variable. Calculate and interpret the variance and standard deviation for a variable. Explain the role that measures of central tendency and variation can play in summarizing the distribution of a variable. Compare values of different variables using z-scored.
