statistics Flashcards
What is nominal data?
-
Categories without order
- eye colour
- marital status
- Discrete data
- Qualitative
- Non parametric
What is ordinal data?
-
Ordered categories
- e.g. fiscat grades
- Discrete data
- Qualitative
- non parametric
What is integer data?
-
Number of counts
- papers published
- Discrete
- Quantitative
- parametric or non parametric
What is Ratio data?
- Zero at origin
-
value dependent on units
- e.g. age,distance
- Continuous data
- Quantitative
- Parametric/non parametric
What is interval data?
-
Distance between units are of known size
- e.g. hours spent revising
- Continuous
- Quantitative
- Parametric
what are the different types of distribution curves?
- Normal distribution- bell shaped curve
-
Skewed distribution
- positive
- negative
- Kurtic distribution
- Platykurtic distribution
what is skewed distribution?
- asymmetrical
- tail
- positive or negative
What is used in skewed distribution to measure the central tendency?
- Median or mode
What is kurtosis?
- Measure of the relative peakness or flatness of a distribution cf normal distribution
What is leptokurotosis?
- Positive kurtosis
- indicates a realtively peaked distribution
What is platykurtosis?
What is the name given to how normal data can be normalised in order to allow parametric testing
- transformation
What is mean?
- The average of the data
- measured by dividing the sum of all observations by the number of observations
What is median?
- The central value of the data
- used for ordinate data
What is the mode?
- The data value with the most frequency
- used for nominal data
In perfectly normalised data what is significant about the mean. median and mode?
- They are the same
What is the range?
- The lowest and highest values of data
- the range does not give much information about the spread of the data
What is percentiles?
- grouping of data into brackets of 1%, 10%, or more commonly 25%
What is variance?
- the measure of spread where the mean is a measure of the central tendency
- variance is the correct sum of the squares about the mean
- (σ (x-mean)2/ (n-1) )
What is the standard deviation?
- The square root of the variance
- for a resonable symmetrical shaped bell data, one standard deviation contains roughly 68% of the data, 2 SD contains roughly 95% of the data, 3 SD contains 99.7% of the data
What is normal distribution defined by?
- 2 parameters
- the mean
- the standard deviation
- symmetrical = mode= median= mean
What is the coefficient of variation?
- SD/mean x 100
- indicates how big the SD is in comparison with the mean
- if SD high then the data are highly variable
what is the standard error of the mean?
- as the SD divided by the square root of the sample size
- used in relation to sample rather than the population as a whole
- the formula does not assume a normal distribution
- it measures how closley the sample mean approximates the population mean
What is the confidence intervals?
- ranges on either side of a sample mean giving a rapid visual impression of significance
- CI are equal to the values between the confidence limits and area set of number of standard errors of estimate size
- for a large sample size 95% CI are approx 2 SEMs either side of the mean
Why are CI prefered to P values?
- Ci’s relate to sample size
- a range of values are provided
- CI provide a rapid visual impression
- CI have the same units as the variables
what is a null hypothesis?
- where a primary assumption is made that any difference seen occurred purely by chance
- collected data are then tested to disprove the null hypothesis
- if the result is significant the null hypothesis is rejected on the basis that it is wrong
What is the p value?
- 5% probability that the difference was seen was due to chance
- often p = 0.05
- if the p value is < 0.05 then this suggests the probability of the difference seen being due to chance is less than 5%
what is type 1 error?
- **When a difference is found **
- but in reality there is not a difference
- ie a false positive
- null hypothesis is rejected incorrectly
- this is the 5% of cases where the difference occured by chance
- ie convincting an innocent man
How can we protect against type 1 errors?
- Reducing significant levels ( although this increases type 2 errors)
- as reduce p values= reduces type 1 errors
- but then bigger samples sizes are required to protect against type 2 errors
What is a type 2 error?
- When no difference is found but in reality a difference does exist
- is a false negative
- there fore the null hypothesis is falsely accepted
- failing to convict a person guilty of the crime
what is a type 2 error the result of?
- Small sample size
- nb important to preform power analysiss before undertaking the study
- protect against type 2 errors by statistical power
- type 2 errors are common in ortho studies
what is a type 3 error?
- occurs rarely
- when the researcher correctly rejects the null hypotheiss but incorrectly attributes the cause
- ie the researcher misinterprets the cause and effect
What is a statistical power analysis?
- A method for determining the number of subjects needed to study in order to have a resonable chance of showing a difference if oen exists
What is statistical power?
- is the probability of demonstrating a true effect or statistically significant difference
- 1-ß
- expressed as a %
- is the probability that the test will correctly reject the null hypothesis
- if the power of the expt is low then there is a good chance the expt wil be inconclusive or give a type 2 error
What are the factors affecting power analysis?
-
Size of the difference between the means
- the larger the difference the easier to detect a difference & > the power
-
Spread of the data
- the larger the spread, the less likely a difference will be detected
-
Acceptable level of significance
- is the p value set
-
sample size
- power increases with increasing sample size
What is an observational study?
- The investigator observes rather than alters events.
- e.g. review of PE after THR
What is an experimental study?
- the investigator applies a maneovre and then oberves the outcome
- e.g. a surgeon may conduct a rct cf warfarin & heparin on the prevalence of DVT in pt with thr
What is the different study timelines?
- Retrospective study
- Prospective study
- Cross sectional study