PSY 2106 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Histogram, Standard Deviation, Descriptive Statistics

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 2106
• Professor: Veronika Huta

Document Summary

What does the slope of data in the variable look like: this can be answered by frequency distribution. What is the most typical/average value of the variable: this can be explained by measures of central tendency (mean, median, and mode) What is the spread of the variable: this can be explained by measure of variability (range, standard deviation, and variance) What percentage of people belong to a category: this is called the proportion. What percentage of people are above/below a certain score: this is called the z-score. What predicts scores on the variable: scores can be predicted by correlation and regression, mean difference, chi- squared contingency (technically and inferential statistic) Descriptive statistics use spreadsheets, tables, etc. to describe the data they have collected but generally doesn"t draw any conclusions from this data. Inferential statistics seek to take a sample of a population and use it to make generalizations/conclusions about the population as a whole.