| A | B |
|---|
| statistics | the science of conducting studies to collect, organize, summarize, analyze, and draw conclusions from data |
| descriptive statistics | a certain statistic minus a fact; consists of the collection, organization, summarization, and presentation of data; the statistician tries to descibe a situation |
| inferential statistics | a generalization, then a statistic is formed, basically making a predicition; statistician tries to make inferences from samples to populations; |
| variable | a characteristic or attribuite that can assume different values |
| random variable | variables whose values are determined by chance |
| population | all subjects that are studied; example: all Murphy students |
| sample | a group of subjects from the population; example, just 12th graders |
| quantitative variables | numerical and can be ranked; example, age, height, weight, temp. |
| discrete variables | can be assigned values; are countable |
| continuous variables | can assume value between two specific values; example , temperature is a continuous variable, since the variable can assume all values between any two given temperatures |
| qualitative variables | can be placed in categories, according to some characteristics or attributes; example, gender, religion, geographic location-zip code |
| boundaries | are used as a rounding technique; 73 could mean 72.5-73.5; boundaries are written for convience as 72.5-73.5, but are understood to mean all values up but not including 73.5 |
| four types of measurement scales | nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio |
