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Unit 1V

Descriptive statistics summarize and describe the basic features of data in a study, distinguishing between simply describing data and making inferences about a population. Univariate analysis focuses on one variable at a time, examining its distribution, central tendency (mean, median, mode), and dispersion. While descriptive statistics provide powerful summaries, they can risk distorting original data or losing important details.

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11 views3 pages

Unit 1V

Descriptive statistics summarize and describe the basic features of data in a study, distinguishing between simply describing data and making inferences about a population. Univariate analysis focuses on one variable at a time, examining its distribution, central tendency (mean, median, mode), and dispersion. While descriptive statistics provide powerful summaries, they can risk distorting original data or losing important details.

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simnan_in
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UNIT IV

Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics are used to describe the basic features of data in a study. They provide simple
summaries about the sample and the measures. Together with simple graphics analysis, they form the
basis of virtually every quantitative analysis of data.
Descriptive statistics are typically distinguished from inferential statistics. With descriptive
statistics you are simply describing what is or what the data shows. With inferential statistics, you are
trying to reach conclusions that extend beyond the immediate data alone. For instance, we use inferential
statistics to try to infer from the sample data what the population might think. Or, we use inferential
statistics to make judgments of the probability that an observed difference between groups is a
dependable one or one that might have happened by chance in this study. Thus, we use inferential
statistics to make inferences from our data to more general conditions; we use descriptive statistics
simply to describe what's going on in our data.
Descriptive Statistics are used to present quantitative descriptions in a manageable form. In a
research study we may have lots of measures. Or we may measure a large number of people on any
measure. Descriptive statistics help us to simplify large amounts of data in a sensible way. Each
descriptive statistic reduces lots of data into a simpler summary. For instance, consider a simple number
used to summarize how well a batter is performing in baseball, the batting average. This single number is
simply the number of hits divided by the number of times at bat (reported to three significant digits). A
batter who is hitting 0.333 is getting a hit onetime in every three at bats. One batting 0.250 is hitting one
time in four. The single number describes a large number of discrete events. Or, consider the scourge of
many students, 1he Grade Point Average (GPA). This single number describes the general performance
of a student across a potentially wide range of course experiences.
Every time you try to describe a large set of observations with a single indicator you run the risk
of distorting the original data or losing important detail. The batting average doesn't tell you whether the
batter is hitting home runs or singles. It doesn't tell whether the player has been in a slump or on a streak.
The GPA doesn't tell you whether the student was in difficult courses or easy ones, or whether they were
courses in their major field or in other disciplines. Even given these limitations, descriptive statistics
provide a powerful summary that may enable comparisons across people or other units.
Univariate Analysis

Univariate analysis involves the examination across cases of one variable at a time. There are three major
characteristics of a single variable that we tend to look at:

• the distribution
• the central tendency
• the dispersion
In most situations, we would describe all three of these characteristics for each of the variables in our
study.
Central Tendency: The central tendency of a distribution is an estimate of the "center" of a distribution
of values. There are three major types of estimates of central tendency:
• Mean
• Median
• Mode
Mean: The Mean or average is probably the most commonly used method of describing central
tendency. To compute the mean all you do is add up all the values and divide by the number of values.
For example, the mean or average quiz score is determined by summing all the scores and dividing by the
number of students taking the exam. For example, consider the test score values:
15,20,21,20,36,15, 25,15
The sum of these 8 values is 167, so the mean is 167/8 = 20.875.
Median: The Median is the score found at the exact middle of the set of values. One way to compute the
median is to list all scores in numerical order, and then locate the score in the center of the sample. For
example, if there are 500 scores in the list, score #250 would be the median. If we order the 8 scores
shown above, we would get:
15,15,15,20,20,21,25,36
There are 8 scores and score #4 and #5 represent the halfway point. Since both of these scores are 20, the
median is 20. If the two middle scores had different values, you would have to interpolate to determine
the median.
Mode: The mode is the most frequently occurring value in the set of scores. To determine the mode, you
might again order the scores as shown above, and then count each one. The most frequently occurring
value is the mode. In our example, the value 15 occurs three times and is the model. In some distributions
there is more than one modal value. For instance, in a bimodal distribution there are two values that occur
most frequently.
Thus for the same set of 8 scores we got three different values viz. 20.875, 20, and 15 — for the mean,
median and mode respectively. If the distribution is truly normal (i.e., bell-shaped), the mean, median
and mode are all equal to each other.

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