SOAN 3120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Class, Tim Hortons, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 3120
• Professor: Ryan Broll

Document Summary

Statistics are mathematical tools used to organize, summarize and manipulate data. Data are scores on variables, or information expressed as numbers. Variables are traits that can change values from case to case. Cases are the entities from which data are gathered (people, groups, provinces) Can be classified as: independent or dependant, discrete or continuous, nominal, ordinal, or interval-ratio. Discrete variables are measured in units that cannot be subdivided: example: gender. Continuous variables are measured in a unit that can be subdivided infinitely: example: age. Scores of a variable are measured on three different levels (noir: nominal: scores are labels only, they are not numbers. Similar to the gender example: ordinal: scores have some numerical qualities and can be ranked. These variables can be ranked from lowest to highest. Example: being in 3rd year of university (you are higher than others) Social class can be measured from low to high: interval-ratio: scores are numbers.