PSYC 60 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Statistical Inference, Sampling Error, Statistic
Document Summary
General topic of statistics follows a well organized progress. Statistics: set of mathematical procedures for organizing, summarizing, and interpreting information. Ex: average income, crime rate, birth rate. Statistics are used to organize and summarize info communicate results to others. Statistics help researcher to answer questions that initiated the research what general conclusions are justified. Provide researchers with set of standardized techniques. Population: entire set of the individuals of interest for a particular research question. Impossible to examine everyone in the population. Sample: a set of individuals selected from a population, usually intended to represent the population. Examining sample generalize results back to the entire population. Researchers interested in specific characteristics of individuals within the population. Variable: characteristic or condition that changes or has different values for different individuals. Data set: collection of measurements or observations. Refer to population or samples of scores. Parameter: value; numerical value that describes a population. Statistic: value; numerical value that describes a sample.
