Ch 6: Generalizations

Base Rate

The overall proportion or probability of a feature in general or in the population at large.

Central Tendency

A value meant to summarize a set of observations by reporting the typical or middle point in a distribution.

Confidence Interval

An interval that indicates that there is a low probability that the true percentage in the population is outside of it.

Convenience Sample

A small and carelessly selected set of observations that generally do not provide evidence for hypotheses.

Geometric Mean

The nth root of the product of n values.

Heuristic

A cognitive shortcut used to simplify reasoning and decision-making.

Law of Large Numbers

The principle that a larger sample size more closely reflects the true proportions of the population.

Loose Generalization

Associating one kind of thing or person with an attribute without clear statistical proportions.

Outlier

An observation that is very distant from a dataset's central tendency, conventionally defined as three standard deviations away.

Sampling Bias

A selection effect created by the way in which a sample is drawn from the population.