Prelim #1 Flashcards
Random Sample
each member of the population has an equal and independent chance of being selected
Volunteer bias
volunteers for a study are likely to be different, on average, from the population
sample of convenience
a collection of individuals that happen to be available at the time
accuracy
an estimate is accurate (unbiased) if the average of estimates is centered on the true population value
precision
a measure of how far apart repeated estimates might be, directly related to sample size
experimental study
researcher randomly assigns individuals to treatment groups
observational
assignment of treatments is not made by researcher
categorical variables
describe membership in category/group. could be dichotomous (binary), ordinal (categories are ordered), or nominal (categories have no natural ordering)
numerical/quantitative variables
quantitative measurements that have magnitude on a numerical scale. either continuous (can be measured) or discrete (can be counted, individual units)
graphing: 1 categorical variable
frequency table, bar graph/bar plot
graphing 1 numerical variable
histogram
graphing 2 categorical variables
grouped bar graph, mosaic plot
graphing 2 numerical variables
scatterplot, line graph (time)
graphing 2 variables: one categorical and one numerical
strip chart, side-by-side box plot, multiple histograms
mean vs median
mean is the center of gravity, median is middle measurement… mean is more affected by outliers/extreme values than median
sample range
max-min…poor measure of distribution width…biased estimator of true range of the population
sample variance (s^2)
the average squared difference from the mean….(standard deviation)^2
standard (s)
positive square root of variance…it is related to the average distance between the mean and each observation…measure of the variability (or spread) of a distribution
what percent of data falls within 1 sd of mean (normal distribution)?
2/3 (66%)
what percent of data falls within 2 sd of mean (normal distribution)?
95%
interquartile range
3rd quartile-1st quartile
skew
measure of asymmetry…refers to pointy tail of a distribution
box plot…where do whiskers extend to?
largest and smallest non-extreme observation
standard error
the standard error of an estimator is the standard deviation of the estimator’s sampling distribution…measures precision