SOCI 3000 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Australian Council Of Trade Unions, Descriptive Statistics, Unimodality
Document Summary
Statistics: a set of mathematical techniques for organizing and analyzing data. Variable: any trait that can change values from case to case ex: gender, and or ethnicity. In inferential statistics, information is gathered from random or epsem samples and then generalized to populations. Population: the total collection of all cases in which the researcher is interested. Descriptive statistics: the branch of statistics concerned with (1) summarizing the distribution of a single variable or (2) measuring the relationship between two or more variables. Inferential statistics: the branch of statistics concerned with making generalizations from sample to populations. Level of measurement: the mathematical characteristics of a variable as determined by the measurement process. Nominal variables: scores are labels only, they are not numbers. Ordinal variable: scores have some numerical value and can be ranked. The level of measurement is important because each level of measurement contains different types of information and therefore determines what types of statistical analysis you can use.
