PSYC 2030 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Null Hypothesis, Causal Inference, Statistical Power
8 Apr 2016
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Averaging group data can produce patterns that don"t represent the individual data. Averaging obscures information that is sometimes (but not always) important (reductionism) Can check whether individual data correspond with the group data. Median: middle, helpful when there are extreme scores. Variability: how scores differ from one another and how much difference across the sample/population. Standard deviation: average amount by which scores differ from the mean. The normal distribution ideal theoretical, population distribution. 68% of all scores within 1 sd of the mean; 95% of all scores within 2 sd of the mean. Stats lie you can use stats to prove anything, when not reported properly stats can be very misleading. From describing data to making inferences about the population from which your sample was drawn. Null-hypothesis statistical testing (nhst): gather data and compare means. Calculate p-value, if below alpha threshold (. 05), reject null; otherwise fail to reject.
