comp methods test

Vocabulary study guide flashcards covering history of computing, experimental design, Excel functions, distributions, descriptive statistics, and inferential testing for PHSC 106 Exam I.

Charles Babbage

An English mathematician and mechanical engineer known as the 'father of the computer' who designed the Analytical Engine.

Ada Lovelace

An English mathematician recognized as the world's first computer programmer, known for writing an algorithm intended to be processed by Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

Alan Turing

A British mathematician, computer scientist, and cryptanalyst who devised the Turing Test and contributed foundational theories to computer science and artificial intelligence.

Tommy Flowers

A British engineer who designed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer used to help decrypt German military messages.

Analytical Engine

A mechanical, general-purpose computer concept proposed in the 1830s by Charles Babbage that incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow, and integrated memory.

Colossus

A set of early electronic digital computers developed around 1943 to 1944 by Tommy Flowers and his team to break encrypted German Lorenz ciphers during World War II.

ENIAC

The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, developed in the mid-1940s by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert as one of the earliest general-purpose electronic digital computers.

Turing Test

A benchmark proposed by Alan Turing to determine whether a machine can exhibit human-level intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of an actual human.

Database

An organized, structured collection of data or information stored electronically in a computer system.

BD Owens Library Database

An academic research library database accessible to students for searching peer-reviewed scientific articles and scholarly sources.

Scientific Method

A systematic, empirical method of acquiring knowledge characterized by observation, forming hypotheses, testing them through experimentation, and analyzing conclusions.

Independent Variable

The variable that is deliberately manipulated, changed, or controlled by the experimenter to test its effects on the dependent variable.

Dependent Variable

The variable being measured or observed in an experiment that changes in response to manipulations of the independent variable.

Controlled Variable

An experimental condition or factor that is kept constant across all trials to prevent it from influencing the dependent variable.

Accuracy

The degree to which a measured or calculated value aligns with the true, known, or accepted standard value.

Precision

The closeness of two or more repeated measurements of the same quantity to each other, reflecting repeatability.

Null Hypothesis

The statistical proposition ($H_0$) that no significant effect, difference, or relationship exists between specified populations or experimental variables.

Alternative Hypothesis

The statistical proposition ($H_a$ or $H_1$) that contradicts the null hypothesis by stating that a genuine effect, difference, or relationship exists.

Categorical Data

Qualitative data that are grouped into distinct, non-numeric categories or labels (e.g., eye color, blood type).

Continuous Data

Quantitative data that can take on any numerical value within a given interval or range (e.g., height, temperature, time).

Discrete Data

Quantitative data consisting of distinct, separate, countable values with no intermediate fractions possible (e.g., coin toss outcomes, counts of objects).

Residuals

The vertical differences between the actual observed values of data points and the corresponding values predicted by a regression line or model.

=SLOPE()

An Excel function used to compute the slope ($m$) of the linear regression trendline for a set of known dependent ($y$) and independent ($x$) values.

=INTERCEPT()

An Excel function that calculates the point at which the best-fit linear trendline crosses the y-axis ($b$).

=COUNTIF(range, criteria)

An Excel function that counts the number of cells within a specified range that satisfy a given condition or criteria.

=STDEV.S()

The Excel function used to calculate the sample standard deviation of a dataset based on a sample of a population ($n - 1$ in the denominator).

=STDEV.P()

The Excel function used to compute the population standard deviation when the dataset includes every entity in the entire population ($N$ in the denominator).

LSQ (Least Squares)

A mathematical optimization technique used in regression analysis that minimizes the sum of the squares of the residuals to find the line of best fit.

=ROUND(RAND(), 0)

An Excel formula used to simulate a fair coin flip, which produces either 0 or 1 with equal probability.

Normal Distribution

A continuous, symmetric, bell-shaped probability distribution centered on the mean, where data clustered around the mean is more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean.

Binomial Distribution

A discrete probability distribution that models the number of successes in a fixed number of independent trials, each with the same probability of success.

Histogram

A graphical representation that organizes a group of continuous data points into user-specified ranges or bins by plotting frequencies as bars.

Population

The complete collection of all elements, individuals, measurements, or outcomes under investigation in a study.

Sample

A smaller, representative subset of data selected from a larger population used to make statistical inferences about that population.

R-Squared

The coefficient of determination ($R^2$) indicating the proportion of the variance in the dependent variable that is predictable from the independent variable in a regression model.

Standard Error of the Mean

A measure of how much a sample mean is expected to vary from the true population mean, calculated as SEM = \frac{s}{\root{}{n}}.

t-Statistic (One-Sample)

A standardized test statistic calculated in a one-sample $t$-test to evaluate the difference between the sample mean and the hypothesized population mean: t = \frac{\bar{x} - \bar{\text{x}}_0}{\frac{s}{\root{}{n}}}.

Degrees of Freedom (d.f.)

The number of independent values that have the freedom to vary in the analysis of a sample, calculated as $d.f. = n - 1$ for a one-sample $t$-test.

1-Tailed t-Test

A directional statistical hypothesis test where the region of rejection falls entirely within one tail of the distribution, testing whether a mean is specifically greater than or less than a specified value.

2-Tailed t-Test

A non-directional statistical hypothesis test that checks for any significant difference between means in either direction, dividing the critical rejection region between both tails.

Chi-Square Test

A statistical hypothesis test used on categorical data to evaluate whether the observed distribution of frequencies differs significantly from expected frequencies.

One-Way ANOVA

An analysis of variance test used to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences between the means of three or more independent groups based on one categorical factor.

Two-Way ANOVA

An analysis of variance test that evaluates the effect of two distinct categorical independent variables, as well as their interaction, on a single continuous dependent variable.