POLSCI 3NN3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Standard Deviation, Central Tendency, Three Steps

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLSCI 3NN3
• Professor: Todd Alway

Document Summary

First step: look at variables and identify level of measurement: nominal, ordinal, interval-ratio. Recall our discussion of frequency tables the first step in analyzing our data. Frequency tables bring order and meaning to our data. We can more easily see and understand the distribution of scores on a given variable. But we can summarize our data even further. The key is to find values that can in some way represent the entire distribution of scores on a particular variable. Three things in describing variable: central tendency - one " typical case " value, measure of dispersion - number giving sense of variety, shape of distribution - (skewing) And that brings us to our next topic: measures of central tendency and measures of. There is more than one measure of central tendency (the 3 ms) We have a choice in terms of what value we treat as typical or average or representative of a distribution.