Midterm Flashcards
research
disciplined inquiry into questions and theories
statistics
organizing numbers and data
qualitative research
stats (organizing numbers and data) + disseminating results
wheel of science
theory > hypothesis > observations > empirical generalizations
descripstive vs inferential statistics
descriptive: what is going on in the data? can be bivariate or multivariate
inferential: generalizing data to population
independent & dependent variables
independent variables lead to dependent variables
x = what is doing the predicting, y = what is being predicted
discrete vs continuous variables
whole number measurements vs fractional measurements
nominal vs ordinal vs interval vs ratio
categories vs ranked variables vs numbers without true zero vs numbers with true zero
percentages and proportions
about conceptualizing data proportions are (f/n), percentages are (f/n)100 where f= frequency and n = number of cases in category
good graphs are….
theoretically motivated, easy to understand, useful
central tendency
the most typical/common/central score. describes data, makes certain characteristics easy to understand
mean and median and mode are all the same when…
the data is a normal curve
dispersion
how much variation is in the scores? when there is less dispersion, the curve is taller and narrower, and when there is more dispersion, the curve is flater and wider
variation ratio
simple measure of statistical dispersion in nominal distributions; it is the simplest measure of qualitative variation.
v = 1 - fm/n, where fm = the number of cases in the mode, and n = total number of cases
i.e. the proportion of cases not in a modal category
determining median in even number of cases
average of the two middle scores
interquartile range
the distance between 3rd and 1st quartile i.e. middle 50%
all scores ________ the mean
all scores cancel out to the mean
mean is the point of ________
mean is the point of minimized variation
when there is positive skew, x-bar is ____ relative to the median
when there is positive skew, x-bar is greater than the median
when there is negative skew, x-bar is ____ relative to the median
when there is negative skew, x-bar is less than the median
when there is no skew, x-bar is ____ relative to the median
when there is no skew, x-bar is equal relative to the median
when there is a positive skew, the shape of the curve is…
when there is positive skew, the shape of the curve is stretched out towards the right, with the “lump” being further to the left.
when there is a negative skew, the shape of the curve is..
when there is a negative skew, the shape of the curve is stretched out towards the left, with the “lump” being further to the right
standard deviation
the average distance from the mean
square root of the average difference from the mean squared
box plots
the box indicates the middle 50%, the lower boundary of the box represents the first quartile (i.e. the point where 25% of the sample lies under) and the upper boundary of the box represents the third quartile (i.e. the point where 75% of the sample lies above). The line through the box indicates the median. The whiskers indicate 1.5xIQR. Outliers are often included.
normal curve
theoretical, bell shaped, unimodal, symmetrical, mode/mean/median is equal