Descriptive stats Flashcards
What are measures of central tendency?
Measures that give us information about the most typical values in a data set.
eg: mean, mode, median
What are measures of dispersion?
Measures that give us information about the spread of scores; how far scores vary and differ from one another.
eg: Range, standard deviation
What is the strength of the mean?
Considered to be an accurate and sensible measure of the average of a set of scores.
What is the weakness of the mean?
It can be influenced by anomalous data which could significantly increase/reduce the calculated mean score making it unreflective of the raw data set.
What is the strength of the mode?
It is unaffected by rogue scores, this means it can be representative of the data set and therefore more accurate.
What is the weakness of the mode?
It doesn’t take into account all the scores within the data set, this reduces the accuracy of the measurement.
What is the strength of the median?
It is unaffected by extreme/anomalous scores, which means the median can be more representative of the hole data set.
What is the weakness of the median?
It doesn’t take into account all the scores within the data set, this reduces the accuracy of the measurement.
What is the strength of the range?
A good way to get a very basic understanding of how spread numbers are within the data set.
What is the weakness of the range?
It’s a very crude measurement of the spread of data as it is extremely sensitive to outliers and as a result can limit the understanding of a true range of a data set
What is standard deviation?
A measure of the average distance between the values of the data in the set and the mean.
What is the strength of standard deviation?
It gives an accurate idea of how data is distributed as it is not affected by extreme values.
What is the weakness of standard deviation?
A complicated calculation that doesn’t give you the full range of data.
