ANTH 1001 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Cumulative Frequency Analysis, Statistical Inference, Interval Ratio
Document Summary
1: within the context of social research, the purpose of statistics is to organize, manipulate and analyze data so that researchers can test their theories and answer their questions. Along with theory and methodology, statistics are a basic tool by which social scientists attempt to enhance their understanding of the social world: there are two general classes of statistics. Descriptive statistics are used to summarize the distribution of a single variable and the relationships between two or more variables. Inferential statistics provide us with techniques by which we can generalize to populations from random samples: two basic guidelines for selecting statistical techniques were presented. Variables may be either discrete or continuous and may be measured at any of three different levels. At the nominal level, we can compare category sizes. At the ordinal level, categories and cases can be ranked with respect to each other. At the interval-ratio level, all mathematical operations are permitted.
