Stats exam 1

Summarizing Thus Far (everything up until exam 1), by 9/29 we have covered:

 Levels of variables’ measurement:

o Categorical

 nominal (categories different and unordered)

 ordinal (categories different and in rank order)

o Continuous

 Interval (categories different, ordered, regular intervals)

 Ratio (categories different, ordered, regular intervals, true zero)

 Concepts and their relations to one another:

o Moderation (z affects relationship between x and y)

o Mediation (x affects y through z)

o Spuriousness (z affects x and z affects y; x and y correlation only coincidental)

 How when we cannot observe everything (and we cannot), being strategic and methodical

about what we observe is better than collecting the most information we can (why sampling

is necessary and how it is effective)

o Random samples, probability vs. non-probability samples and their types, samples vs.

populations, population parameter, sampling distribution, sampling error, and margin

of error, sampling frame

 Defining:

o statistics, quantitative data, univariate analysis, bivariate analysis, frequency

distributions, relative/percentage distributions, cross-tabs, mean comparisons,

conditional means, bivariate regression, the basic research process, qualitative and

quantitative methods, independent variable, dependent variable, direction of

association, empirical generalization, conceptualization, operationalization, measures

of central tendency, measures of variability/variation

 Defining and/or actively computing/applying (and where appropriate, recognizing the

equations for computing):

o Mean, median, mode, percentiles, variation, standard deviation, coefficient of

variation, range, interquartile range, index of qualitative variation, the normal

distribution and its properties, central limit theorem, z-scores/standard scores