PS102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Statistical Inference, Observer-Expectancy Effect, Standard Deviation
Document Summary
Naturalistic observations: have to wait for an event to happen, observer bias. Laboratory observations: loss of spontaneity, same as above. Case studies: limited sample size, low generalizability, observer bias. Selection bias (cure: random sampling/ random assignment. Used to give basic information about what we find. Uses statistics such as the mean, the standard deviation, the range (known as measures of central tendency) Mean = average: add all the scores, then divide by the amount of scores. Median: middle score, the one that falls in the middle of the distribution. Mode: mode is the most popular score in the distribution. Involves measuring and determining the relation between two variables. E. g. number of friends and self esteem. More rigorous in terms of control, empirical measurement and statistical analysis. Still no causation: arm length and height. Positive as one variable goes up, the other does too. Negative as one variable goes up, the other decreases. Spurious no connection but seems like they do.
