Quantitative Data Analysis Flashcards
What is the key term for the mean, median and mode.
Measures of Central Tendency.
What are measures of central tendencies?
The mean, median and mode.
What is the mode?
The most frequently occurring value.
NOMINAL DATA
Give an advantage of using the mode.
Easy to determine.
Not affected by extreme scores.
Give a disadvantage of using the mode.
Not useful on small data sets with frequently occurring values
Could be several means.
What is the median?
The middle value of scores.
ORDINAL DATA
Give an advantage of using the median.
It is an easy calculation of the average score.
Not affected by extreme scores / skewed distribution.
Give a disadvantage of using the median.
Less sensitive than the mean.
Not useful on data sets with a small number of values - may not represent the typical score.
What is the mean?
The arithmetic average.
INTERVAL / RATIO LEVEL DATA
Give an advantage of using the mean.
Most sensitive.
All scores in data set are used in the calculation.
Give a disadvantage of using the mean.
Can be affected by extreme values / skewed distribution of values.
What are measures of dispersion?
The spread of data:
The range, interquartile range, standard deviation.
What key term are the range, interquartile range, standard deviation examples of?
Measures of dispersion.
What is the range?
The difference between the highest and lowest value.
(subtract lowest value from highest value)
Give an advantage of using the range.
It is the simplest calculation of dispersion.
Covers the whole of the data set.
Give a disadvantage of using the range.
Affected by extreme scores ( not useful if there are outliers )
Doesn’t tell us if the scores are bounced around the mean score, or more equally distributed around it.
What is the interquartile range?
Cutting out the lowest and highest quarter of values (top + bottom 25%) and calculating the rename of the remaining middle half (50%) of scores.
Give an advantage of using the interquartile range.
Better for a data set with extreme scores- removes extreme values.
What is standard deviation?
A single value representing the distance of all values from the arithmetic mean.
Give an advantage of using standard deviation.
Allows us to see the spread of scores around the mean.
Uses all the data.
Give a disadvantage of using standard deviation.
Doesn’t give you the full range of data.
Can be time consuming and hard to calculate.
