PSYC 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Descriptive Statistics, Central Tendency, Normal Distribution

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1000
• Professor: Anneke Olthof

Document Summary

Step 1: organize numbers so that we can see the big picture ; involves tables and graphs. Step 2: test to see if there are meaningful differences between groups or experimental conditions. Descriptive statistics: a set of techniques used to organize, summarize and interpret data. Three types of descriptive data are commonly used: frequency, central tendency and variability. Frequency: the number of observations that fall within a certain category or range of scores. Reading histograms: the higher the bar, the more frequent the result is. Sometimes data is more easily presented using a curve. Normal distribution: a symmetrical graph with values clustered around one mean value (ex. the entire class scored around the same on a test) Negatively skewed distribution: a distribution in which the graph tails to the left (ex. most of the class scored very high but a few scored very low)