Psychology - Psychology Measurement and Statistics | Psychology

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Study GuidePsychology–Psychology: Measurement and Statistics1.Descriptive StatisticsDescriptive statistics is a set of methods that help us summarize and describe data in a meaningfulway. Before we can make sense of data, we need to organize it, measure it, and express it asnumbers. Common ways to summarize data aremeasures of central tendency(like mean, median,and mode) andmeasures of variability(like range, variance, and standard deviation).1.1 Organizing DataThe first step in working with data is usuallyorganizing it visually. This makes patterns easier tosee. Common tools for this include:•Frequency distributions•Histograms•Frequency polygonsFrequency DistributionAfrequency distributionis a table that shows how often each value occurs. It’s a neat way toorganize your data so you can see patterns at a glance.Example:How many hours students studied for an exam.

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Study GuideIn the table:•Thetally columnshows how many students fall into each category.•Thefrequency columnconverts those tallies into numbers.•Thetotal hours studied columnmultiplies the number of hours by the frequency to showcumulative effort.Frequency HistogramAfrequency histogramis a bar graph showing the same data from a frequency distribution.•Y-axis:number of students (frequency)•X-axis:hours studiedEach bar’s height shows how many students studied that many hours.

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Study GuideFrequency PolygonAfrequency polygonis another way to graph data. Instead of bars, it connects points showing thefrequency of each value.•Imagine connecting the midpoints of the bars from the histogram—that gives you afrequency polygon.

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Study Guide1.2. Measures of Central TendencyCentral tendency tells us theaverage or typical valueof a dataset. There are three commonmeasures:1.Mean–the arithmetic average2.Median–the middle valueoHalf of the observations fall below the median, and half above.oIf there’s an even number of values, take the average of the middle two.oIn our example: 6 hours is the median.3.Mode–the value that appears most oftenoIn the study hours example: 6 hours (8 students studied 6 hours).Graphical Representation of Central Tendency•When plotted on a curve, the mean, median, and mode can be visualized.oa)Normal distribution (mean = median = mode)ob)Negatively skewed (left skewed)oc)Positively skewed (right skewed)

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