PSY 207 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Statistical Inference, Statistic, Descriptive Statistics
Document Summary
A set of tools used to organize, describe, and analyze numerical observations. These tools are used to describe and analyze numerical observations derived from populations and samples. Populations and samples: we use different terms to refer to the statistics used for populations and samples. Population : the set of all individuals of interest. Sample: a subset of a population average # of hours of sleep for entire population of depressed individuals. Parameter: a numerical description of a characteristic of a population. Statistic: a numerical description of a characteristic of a sample average # of hours of sleep for those in our study. The term statistics is used to refer to the whole set of tools we use to describe and analyze numerical observations. A statistic refers to a specific tool applied to samples. A parameter refers to a specific tool applied to populations. Examples: arithmetic average (statistical mean), standard deviation, quartiles, etc.
