Descriptive Statistics Flashcards

Flashcards based on lecture notes for reviewing descriptive statistics concepts.

Statistics

The discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data.

Descriptive Statistics

Statistical methods used to summarize data from a sample (e.g., mean or standard deviation).

Inferential Statistics

Statistical methods used when data is viewed as a subclass of a specific population.

Population

A set of similar items or events of interest for some question or experiment.

Sample

A set of individuals or objects collected or selected from a statistical population.

Variable

Any quantity or attribute whose value varies from one unit of investigation to another.

Observation

The value taken by a variable for a particular unit of investigation.

Quantitative Variable

A variable whose values are numerical.

Continuous Variable

A quantitative variable which may take all values within a given range.

Discrete Variable

A discrete variable is variable whose values change by steps or jumps.

Qualitative Variable / Attribute

A variable whose values are not numerical.

Frequency Distribution

An overview of all distinct values in some variable and the number of times they occur.

Relative Frequencies

Frequencies relative to (divided by) the total number of values, often shown as percentages or proportions.

Class-Interval

A subdivision of the total range of possible values of a continuous variable, used for grouping values in frequency tables.

Class-Frequency

The number of observations of the variable which fall in a given interval.

Frequency Distribution (Continuous Variable)

The set of class-intervals for the variable, together with the associated class-frequencies.