SOAN 3120 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Pie Chart, Exploratory Data Analysis, Categorical Variable

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 3120
• Professor: Michelle Dumas

Document Summary

Any set of data contains information about some group of individuals are the objects described by a set of data, they may be people but they can be animals or things. The information is organized in variables is any characteristics of an individual, a variable can take different values for different individuals. Categorical variable places an individual into one of several groups of categories. Quantitative variable takes numerical values for which arithmetic operations such as adding and averaging make sense, the values of a quantitative variable are usually recorded in a unit of measurement such as seconds or kilograms. Most data tables follow this format each row is an individual, and each column is a variable. Spreadsheets are commonly used to enter and transmit data and do simple calculations. Statistical tools and ideas help us examine data in order to describe their main features, this is called exploratory data analysis.