Psychology 2810 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Cluster Sampling, Royal Institute Of Technology, Random Number Generation

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2810
• Professor: Stephen Lupker

Document Summary

Statistics- the science of data; involves collecting, classifying, summarizing, organizing, analyzing, presenting, and interpreting numerical and categorical information. Experimental (or observational) unit- an object (ie. person, thing, transaction, or event) about which we collect data. Population- a set of all units (ie. people, objects, transactions, or events) that we are interested in studying. Variable- a characteristic or property of an individual experimental unit in the population: any particular characteristic may vary among the units in a population. Measurement- the process we use to assign numbers to variables of individual population units. Census- the action of measuring a variable for every unit of a population. Sample- a subset of the units of a population. Statistical inference- an estimate, prediction, or some other generalization about a population based on information contained in a sample: ie. we use the info contained in the smaller sample to learn about the larger population.