STAT 301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Scatter Plot, Dependent And Independent Variables
Document Summary
Variables and observations: variables are items (usually represented by letters or symbols) of interest which can take on different values, an observation is the person or thing the variables are measured on. Variable types: quantitative, numeric variables (height, weight number of customers, etc, quantitative variables have values that we can do sensible math with. Numbers which do not represent quantities are not quantitative: categorical, names or categories, (eye color, car make, breed of dog, etc, sometimes categorical variables are also referred to as qualitative, non-quantative numbers are considered categorical. Predictors are like independent variables and the response is like the dependent variable. If we are investigating a "cause and effect" relationship, then the predictor is the "cause" and the response is the "effect" Predictor: these are variables which we think will be useful in predicting or explaining the response variable. Sometimes called the "independent variable" or the "explanatory variable" There may be more than one predictor variable.
