Week 1: Data Levels & Descriptive Statistics (VOCABULARY)

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts in data types, levels of measurement, distributions, and descriptive statistics from Week 1 notes.

Qualitative data

Data in words or categories; non-numeric information

Quantitative data

Numeric data representing quantities or amounts

Discrete data

Data that take distinct, separate values with no meaningful values between them (e.g., whole numbers)

Continuous data

Data on a continuous scale with possible intermediate values (e.g., height, age with fractions)

Nominal level of measurement

Categories with names only and no inherent order

Ordinal level of measurement

Categories with a meaningful order, but intervals between categories are not necessarily equal

Interval level of measurement

Numeric data with equal intervals between values; no true zero

Ratio level of measurement

Numeric data with a true zero; allows meaningful ratios and comparisons

True zero

Zero represents the absence of the quantity; allows multiplication/division meaningfulness

Skew

Asymmetry in the distribution; tails extend more to one side (left or right)

Right-skewed (positive skew)

Tail extends to the right; bulk of data on the left

Left-skewed (negative skew)

Tail extends to the left; bulk of data on the right

Central tendency

A measure of the center of the data (e.g., mean, median, mode)

Dispersion

How spread out the data are around the center (range, variance, standard deviation)

Distribution

The pattern or shape of how data values are spread across the range (e.g., bell-shaped, skewed)

Outlier

An unusually distant value that falls far from the rest of the data

Mode

The most frequent data value in a dataset

Variation ratio

For qualitative data, the percentage of observations not equal to the mode; a measure of diversity

Descriptive statistics

Statistics that summarize data characteristics (central tendency, dispersion, distribution)