MMW FINALS

Discrete Variable

A quantitative variable with a finite or countable number of possible values.

Continuous Variable

A quantitative variable with an infinite, uncountable number of possible values.

Descriptive Statistics

Describes and measures the characteristics of data.

Inferential Statistics

Analysis and interpretation of data.

Nominal Scale

Uses labels or names to identify an attribute of an element.

Ordinal Scale

Data has all nominal data properties, plus a meaningful order or rank.

Interval Scale

Has ordinal data properties, plus a fixed unit of measure between observations.

Ratio Scale

The data has all interval data properties, plus a meaningful ratio between two values.

Central Tendency

The numerical or statistical value that tends to locate the middle set of data.

Mean or Average

Most commonly used average or measure of central tendency.

Median

The value of the middle term when the data is either in ascending or descending order.

Mode

The most frequent occurring value in a given set of data.

Measure of Dispersion

Descriptive statistics that describe how similar a set of scores are to each other.

Range

The difference between the largest and smallest score in the set of data.

Variance

A measure of dispersion of observations within a data set.

Standard Deviation

A numerical value that describes variability of observations from its arithmetic mean.

Quartiles

3 score points that divide the data into 4 equal parts.

Deciles

9 score points that divide the data into 10 equal parts.

Percentiles

99 score points that divide the data into 100 equal parts.

Frequency Distribution

A summary of how often different values occur in a dataset.

Normal Distribution

A probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean.

Data

Information that has been collected from an experiment, a survey, a historical record, etc.

Data

They are the facts and figures collected, summarized, analyzed, and interpreted

Statistics

A field of study that deals with collection, organization, presentation, analysis and interpretation of data

John Naisbitt

"We are drowning in information but starved in knowledge "

Clifford Stoll

"Data is not information --- information is not knowledge --- knowledge is not understanding --- is not wisdom "