Psyc 300 Module 14: Descriptive statistics (Module 2 of Psyc 301) Flashcards
Measure of central tendency (4)
what it is + represented by
A measure of the typical value in a collection of numbers or a data set
- measured by mean, median and mode
Mean (2)
+ how to find?
The average
Sum of all the scores divided by the total number of scores
Population mean
Sample mean
Median (2)
How to find?
The value that lies in the middle of the data when the data set is ordered
- First rank the data, then the position of the median is equal to the number of enteries plus one divided by 2
Odd number of entries when caculating median:
median is the middle data entry
Even number of entries when calculating median:
Median is the mean of the 2 middle data entries
Mode
The most frequent value
If no data set is repeated then the data has no
mode
If two entries occur with the same greatest frequency each entry is a — and is called
- mode
- bimodal
Finding the mode
finding the greatest frequency
Advantage of using the mean (2)
- most common statistic
- Takes into account every entry of a data set
Disadvantage of using the mean (2)
- greatly affgected by extreme scores (outliers)
- Knowledge about individual cases is lost with averages
Advantages of using the median (2)
- Little influence by extreme scores
- Reasonable estimate of what most people mean by the center of a distribution
Disadvantage of using the median
- may not be good to ignore extreme values
Advanatges of using the mode (2)
- the most frequently obtained score
- not influenced by extreme score
Disadvanatge of using the mode (2)
- may not represent a large proportion of the scores
- ignores extreme values
Variability
numbers which describe how spread out a set of data is
Examples of variability meausres (4)
- range (interquartile range)
- deviation
- variance
- standard deviation
Range+ formula (2)
length of the smallest interval that contains all the data
range= largest value - smallest value
range is sensitive to
- sample size: small samples= less range (less respresentative range)
- extreme scores (tells you smallest and largest but not bulk)
Interquartile range (2)
+ formula
Measure of distance between first and third quartiles
- IQR= Q3-Q1