Statistics Intro

Univariate Analysis
Central Tendency
Dispersion
Review of Descriptive
Stats.
 Descriptive Statistics are used to
present quantitative descriptions
in a manageable form.
 This method works by reducing
lots of data into a simpler
summary.
 Example:
 Batting average in baseball
 Cornell’s grade-point system
Univariate Analysis
 This is the examination across cases of
one variable at a time.
 Frequency distributions are used to
group data.
 One may set up margins that allow us to
group cases into categories.
 Examples include
 Age categories
 Price categories
 Temperature categories.
Distributions
 Two ways to describe a univariate
distribution
 A table
 A graph (histogram, bar chart)
Distributions (con’t)
 Distributions may also be
displayed using percentages.
 For example, one could use
percentages to describe the
following:
 Percentage of people under the
poverty level
 Over a certain age
 Over a certain score on a
Distributions (cont.)
A Frequency Distribution Table

Category Percent
Under 35 9%
36-45 21
46-55 45
56-65 19
66+ 6
Distributions (cont.)
A Histogram

45
40
35
30
25
20
Percent
15
10
5
0
Under

36-45

46-55

56-65

66+
35
Central Tendency
 An estimate of the “center” of a
distribution
 Three different types of estimates:
 Mean
 Median
 Mode
Mean
 The most commonly used method
of describing central tendency.
 One basically totals all the results
and then divides by the number of
units or “n” of the sample.
 Example: The HSS 292 Quiz 1
mean was determined by the sum
of all the scores divided by the
number of students taking the
Working Example (Mean)
 Lets take the set of scores:
15,20,21,20,36,15, 25,15
 The Mean would be 167/8=20.875
Median
 The median is the score found at
the exact middle of the set.
 One must list all scores in
numerical order and then locate
the score in the center of the
sample.
 Example: If there are 500 scores in
the list, score #250 would be the
median.
 This is useful in weeding out
Working Example (Median)
 Lets take the set of scores:
15,20,21,20,36,15, 25,15
 First line up the scores.
 15,15,15,20,20,21,25,36
 The middle score falls at 20. There
are 8 scores, and score #4 and #5
represent the halfway point.
Mode
 The mode is the most repeated
score in the set of results.
 Lets take the set of scores:
15,20,21,20,36,15, 25,15
 Again we first line up the scores
 15,15,15,20,20,21,25,36
 15 is the most repeated score and
is therefore labeled the mode.
Central Tendency
 If the distribution is normal (i.e.,
bell-shaped), the mean, median
and mode are all equal.
 In our analyses, we’ll use the
mean.
Dispersion
 Two estimates types:
 Range
 Standard deviation
 Standard deviation is more
accurate/detailed because an
outlier can greatly extend the
range.
Range
 The range is used to identify the
highest and lowest scores.
 Lets take the set of
scores:15,20,21,20,36,15, 25,15.
 The range would be 15-36. This
identifies the fact that 21 points
separates the highest to the lowest
score.
Standard Deviation
 The standard deviation is a value
that shows the relation that
individual scores have to the mean
of the sample.
 If scores are said to be
standardized to a normal curve,
there are several statistical
manipulations that can be
performed to analyze the data set.
Standard Dev. (con’t)
 Assumptions may be made about the
percentage of scores as they deviate
from the mean.
 If scores are normally distributed, one
can assume that approximately 69% of
the scores in the sample fall within one
standard deviation of the mean.
Approximately 95% of the scores would
then fall within two standard deviations
of the mean.
Standard Dev. (con’t)
 The standard deviation calculates
the square root of the sum of the
squared deviations from the mean
of all the scores, divided by the
number of scores.
 This process accounts for both
positive and negative deviations
from the mean.
Working Example (stand.
dev.)
 Lets take the set of scores
15,20,21,20,36,15, 25,15.
 The mean of this sample was found to
be 20.875. Round up to 21.
 Again we first line up the scores.
 15,15,15,20,20,21,25,36.
 21-15=6, 21-15=6, 21-15=6,20-21=-
1,20-21=-1, 21-21=0, 21-25=-4, 36-
21=15.
 Working Ex. (Stan. dev.
con’t)
 Square these values.
 36,36,36,1,1,0,16,225.
 Total these values. 351.
 Divide 351 by 8. 43.8
 Take the square root of 43.8. 6.62
 6.62 is your standard deviation.