NUR 80A/B Lecture 3: Winter Week 3 - Descriptive/Bivariate Statistics
13 Dec 2011
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Document Summary
Knowing the average score for a test or measure is useful but it does not tell the whole story. It"s one thing to know the class average was 72. It"s also important to know where most people"s scores on that test fell as well: that is variability- the spread of scores. Variability reflects how scores differs from the mean (average). Let"s say you entered a swimming contest which included swimmers with a range of abilities and the average score was 7/10. Together, average and variability can be used to describe the characteristics of a distribution and show how distributions differ from one another. When you read nursing research expect to see the average and a variability test result reported. Variability measures the degree to which scores in a distribution are spread out or dispersed: homogeneity little variability heterogeneity great variability.
