Sociology 2205A/B Lecture 1: Lecture 1

• School: Western University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: Sociology 2205A/B
• Professor: William Marshall

Document Summary

Statistics: are mathematical tools used to organize, summarize and manipulate data. Data: are scores on variables, or information expressed as numbers (quantitatively) Variables: are traits that can change values from case to case (ex. Cases: are the entities from which data are gathered (ex. Summarize the relationship between three or more variables (multivariate) class) countries) Discrete: variables are measured in units that cannot be subdivided. Continuous: variables are measured ina unit that can be subdivided infinitely. Age (19 years, 3 months, 2 weeks etc. ) The mathematical quality of the scores of a variable is measured on three different levels, called levels of measurement. Nominal: scores are labels only, they are not numbers. Ordinal: scores have some numerical quality and can be ranked (ex. Money, there is no negative amount of money, true zero) o o o o. Comparisons and counting of cases, greater than and less than.