Introduction To Some Basic Statistical Concepts And Terms Flashcards
What are our variables for this experiment?
The 12 exterior attributes of a house
Provide an example of an Ordinal measurement.
Increasing overall housing quality at an increasing distance from the Sandwich Post Office.
Provide an example of a Nominal measurement.
Each street has its own numerical identifier; and each attribute-condition is coded with both a word-descriptor and a number.
Provide an example of an Interval measurement.
Our overall measure of a house’s exterior quality will be on a percentage scale.
Generally speaking, what are Bar Charts/Graphs or Histograms?
Simple graphical displays of the distribution of data.
What is Probability?
A likelihood or an odds of something occurring, or the frequency with which something occurred.
What is our ultimate objective?
To draw conclusions about the population from an observed sample.
*Note Sampling Error
Discuss sampling error and uncertainty in results.
A small sample of observations will not include all of the variability of the observations in the population, therefore, error is introduced.
What are Inferential Statistics?
Control mechanisms for errors produced when generalizing a result from a sample to a population.
What’s our theory?
An explanation of why exterior housing quality varies from house to house, across space and time.
How does theory relate to hypothesis?
Hypotheses are deduced from theory.
Why do we have competing theories?
Because in the Social Sciences, a researcher can never prove the truth of his or her theory (experiments are never 100% replicable) and thus, we have competing theories.
