Biology 2244A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 1-2 : Exploratory Data Analysis, Vertical Bar, Confounding
Document Summary
Understanding the definitions of: subjects, treatments, explanatory variables (i. e. factors), response variables, control groups, placebo. The vocabulary associated with describing variables (e. g. quantitative, nominal, continuous) How to describe distributions in terms of centre, spread and shape. How to interpret and apply the formulae for center and spread. How to identify outliers using the 1. 5xlqr rule and illustrate these on modified boxplots. Individuals are the objects described by a set of data. Individuals may be people but they may also be animals, plants or things. A variable is any characteristic of an individual. A variable can take different values for different individuals. A categorical variable places an individual into one of several groups or categories. A quantitative variable takes numerical values for which arithmetic operations such as adding and averaging make sense. The values of a quantitative variable are usually recorded in a unit of measurement such as sec or kg.