PSYC 2020 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Statistic, Metar, Squared Deviations From The Mean

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2020
• Professor: Alistair Mapp

Document Summary

To say things are variables means that they are not all the same. Goal - to measure the amount of variability for a particular set of scores, a distribution. If the scores in a distribution are all the same, then there is no variability. If there are small differences between scores, than the variability is small, and if there are large differences between scores, than the variability is large. Definition - variability provides a quantitative measure of the differences between scores in a distribution and describes the degree to which the scores are spread out or clustered together. The purpose for measuring variability is to obtain an obtain an objective measure of how the scores are spread out in a distribution. A good measure of variability serves two purposes: variability describes the distribution. The distance covered by the score sin a distribution, from the smallest score to the largest score.