Understanding Your Data: Central Tendency and Dispersion

These flashcards cover key concepts related to central tendency and dispersion in statistics, emphasizing definitions and measures relevant to data analysis.

Central Tendency

The 'typical' score or value in a dataset.

Dispersion

The 'spread' of scores in a dataset.

Mean

The average value of all scores in a dataset.

Median

The middle value in an ordered dataset, with half the scores below and half above.

Mode

The value that occurs most frequently in a dataset.

Range

The distance between the highest and lowest scores in a dataset.

Standard Deviation

A measure of the average distance of a score from the mean, indicating how spread out the scores are.

Variance

The average of the squared deviations from the mean, a precursor to calculating standard deviation.

Academic Ability

A specific measure of performance on an entrance exam, used in analysis.

68-95 rule

A guideline stating that approximately 68% of data falls within 1 standard deviation of the mean, and about 95% falls within 2 standard deviations.