Descriptive statistics

Question 1

what level of data should the mean be used with?

Answer 1

interval

Question 2

what level of data should the median be used with?

Answer 2

ordinal

Question 3

what level of data should the mode be used with?

Answer 3

nominal

Question 4

How do u calculate the mean?

Answer 4

-adding up all the scores and then dividing by the total number of scores

Question 5

How do u calculate the mode?

Answer 5

-the most common value

Question 6

How do u calculate the median?

Answer 6

-place the numbers in order and find the middle value

Question 7

What are the advantages of calculating the mean?

Answer 7

-it is sensitive as it takes every value into account

Question 8

What are the advantages of calculating the median?

Answer 8

-unaffected by outliers in one direction

Question 9

What are the advantages of calculating the mode?

Answer 9

• shows what most participants scored

- unaffected by extreme scores

Question 10

What are the disadvantages of calculating the mean?

Answer 10

-may not represent the general set of scores

Question 11

What are the disadvantages of calculating the median?

Answer 11

• doesn’t take into account every score

- doesn’t work well with small data

Question 12

What are the disadvantages of calculating the mode?

Answer 12

• cant be used for small data of there is no mode

- large sets of data may have many modes

Question 13

When shouldn’t the mode be used?

Answer 13

when there are several scores that occur frequently

Question 14

When shouldn’t the median be used?

Answer 14

when data is interval or nominal

Question 15

When shouldn’t the mean be used?

Answer 15

when there are anomlis

Question 16

give the definition of the term measure of central tendency

Answer 16

mathmatical way to describe a typical or average score from data set

Question 17

howdo u calculate the mean?

Answer 17

largest value - smallest value

Question 18

What level of data should the range be used with?

Answer 18

median

ie ordinal

Question 19

What are the advantages of calculating the range?

Answer 19

-easy to calculate

Question 20

What are the advantages of calculating the variance?

Answer 20

-takes into account all scores

Question 21

What are the advantages of calculating standard deviation?

Answer 21

• takes into account all scores

- sensitive measure of dispersion

Question 22

define the term measure of dispersion

Answer 22

describes the variation of spread in the scores in the data set, around the measure of central tendency

Question 23

when should the range be used?

Answer 23

when the data is consistent and there are no extreme scores

Question 24

when should the standard deviation be calculated?

Answer 24

when you wish to make a very sensitive measure of dispersion

Question 25

What are the disadvantages of calculating the range?

Answer 25

easily distorted by extreme scores

Question 26

What are the disadvantages of calculating standard deviation?

Answer 26

difficult to calculate compared with the mean

Question 27

what does a large standard deviation indicate?

Answer 27

spread from the mean

Question 28

what does a small standard deviation indicate?

Answer 28

clustered closely around the mean

Question 29

what does a zero standard deviation indicate?

Answer 29

it is the mean