STAT 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Sampling Bias

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Statistics
• Course: STAT 100
• Professor: G. Yapa

Document Summary

Statistical terms: observational study: observe individuals and use appropriate measurements for variables of interest, must not in any way influence responses, sample surveys: these are a special kind of observational study. A sample is chosen from a population in a way that best represents the population at hand: example: studying the amount of smokers in an area. The researches only observes, they do not in any way encourage or request people to smoke for the purpose of their study. : not all data is obtained with equal quality. How they are collected also affects the legitimacy of the data. For example: if too many variables want to be studied, the experiment may be very costly. Classifying variables: many different types of variables, two main branches: quantitative & qualitative, quantitative: there are two main types: discrete & continuous. Discrete data takes on whole number values, like 1,2,3 etc.