Sampling and data collection

Types of data, other keywords

Qualitative data

Data described in words rather than numbers to depict something, like the color of a teacher's car.

Quantitative data

Data represented using numbers to count or measure something, for instance, the number of pets a student has.

Discrete data

Quantitative data requiring counting, taking specific values from a set, e.g., the number of coin flips until a tails is obtained.

Continuous data

Quantitative data necessitating measurement, able to take any value within an infinite range, such as the height of a student.

Population

The entire set of items of interest, like all French bulldogs worldwide for a vet studying their sleep patterns.

Sample

A subset of the population used to gather data, like selecting French bulldogs from different cities to record their sleep duration.

Sampling frame

A list of all population members, such as a list of employees' names in a company.

Population parameter

A numerical value describing a population characteristic, typically unknown, like the mean height of all 16-year-olds in the UK.

Sample statistic

A value computed from sample data, used to estimate population parameters, e.g., the mean height of 200 randomly selected 16-year-olds in the UK.