Chapter 8: The Use of Statistics in  It helps the teacher to make the data

Outcomes Assessment precise and meaningful and to express

it in understandable and interpretable
Statistics and Its Role in Education manner
Statistics 4. It enables the teacher to draw general
- The practice or science of collecting conclusions.
and analyzing numerical data in large  Statistics help to draw conclusions as
quantities, especially for the purpose well as extracting conclusions.
of inferring proportions in a whole
from those in a representative sample  Statistical steps help to say about how
- The study and manipulation of data, much faith should be placed in any
including ways to gather, review, conclusion and about how far we may
analyze, and draw conclusions from extend our generalization
data.
5. It helps the teacher to predict the
- a branch of mathematics dealing with future performance of the students.
the collection, analysis, interpretation,
and presentation of masses of  Statistics enables the teacher to
numerical data predict how much of a thing will
happen under conditions we know and
- simply defined as the study and have measured.
manipulation of data
 For example the teacher can predict
Statistics in Education the probable score of the student in
the finale examination from his
- Measurement and evaluation are entrance test score.
essential part of teaching learning
process  But the prediction may be incorrect
- In this process we obtained scores and due to different factors.
then interpret these scores in order to
take decisions  Statistical methods tell about how
- Statistics enables us study these much margin of error to allow in
scores objectively making predictions.
- It makes the teaching learning process 6. Statistics enables the teacher to
more efficient analyze some of the casual factors
Roles of Statistics in Education underlying complex and otherwise be-
wildering(confusing) events;
1. It helps the teacher to provide the
most exact type of description  It is common factor that the
behavioral outcome is a resultant of
 When we want to know the student, numerous casual factors.
we administer a test or observe the
child  The reason why a particular student
performs poor in a particular subject
 Then from the result we describe are varied and many.
about the students performance or
trait  So with the appropriate statistical
methods, we can keep the extraneous
 Statistics helps the teacher to give an variables constant and can observe
accurate description of the data. the cause of failure of the pupil in a
particular subject.
2. It makes the teacher definite and exact
in procedure and thinking. Important Concepts in Statistics
 Sometimes due to lack of technical Basic Terms in Statistics
knowledge, the teachers become
vague in describing students’ - Data – values that the variables can
performance assume
- Variable – characteristics that is
 But Statistics enable him/her to observable or measurable in every
describe the performance by using unit of universe
some language and symbols which - Population – the set of all possible
makes interpretation definite and values of a variable
exact. - Sample – a subgroup of a population
3. It enables the teacher to summarize Classification of Variables
the results in a meaningful and
convenient form. Qualitative Variables

 Statistics give order to data - Words or codes that represent a class

or category
 - Express as a categorical attribute - The ranking of contestants in a beauty
(gender, religion, marital status, contest, of siblings in the family, or of
highest educational attainment) honor students in the class are of
ordinal scale.
Quantitative Variables
Interval
- Number that represents an amount or
a count. - A scale in which equal differences
in scores represent equal
- Numerical data, sizes are meaningful differences in amount of the
and answer questions as “how many” property measured, but with an
or “how much” arbitrary zero point.
- Examples are height, weight, - If the data are measured in the
household size, number of registered interval level, we can say not only
cars one object is greater or less than
another, but we can also specify
Classification of Quantitative the amount of difference.
Variables - The scores in an examination are of
the interval scale of measurement.
Discrete Variables
- To illustrate, suppose Maria got 50
- Data that can be counted (number of in Math examination while Martha
days, number of siblings, usual got 40. We can say that Maria got
number of text messages sent in day) higher than Martha by 10 points.

Continuous Variables Ratio Scale

- It can assume all values between any - All the properties of an interval scale
two specific values like 0.5, 1.2 etc with the additional property of zero
and data can be measured (weight, indicating a total absence being
height, body temperature measured.

Levels of Measurement - The ratio level of measurement is like

the interval level. The only difference
Nominal is that the ratio level always starts
- Data created by assigning from an absolute or true zero point.
observations into various independent - If the data are measured in this level,
categories and then counting the we can say that one object is so many
frequency of occurrence within each of times as large or small as the other.
the categories.
- For example, suppose Mrs. Reyes
- This is the most primitive level of weighs 50 kg, while her daughter
measurement. weighs 25 kg. We can say that Mrs.
- It is used when we want to distinguish Reyes is twice as heavy as her
one object from another for daughter . Thus, weight is an example
identification purposes. of data measured in the ratio scale.

- In this level, we can say that one

object is different from another, but
the amount of difference between
them cannot be determined.
- We cannot tell that one is better or
worse than the other.
- Gender, Nationality, and civil status
are nominal scale.
Important Analyses in Statistics
Ordinal
Measures of Central Tendency
- A scale in which scores indicate only
relative amounts or rank order - A single value that attempts to
describe a set of data by identifying
- In this level, data are arranged in the central position within that set of
some specified order or rank. data.
- When objects are measured in this - As such, measures of central tendency
level, we can say that one is better or are sometimes called measures of
greater than the other. But we cannot central location.
tell how much more or how much less
of the characteristics one object has - They are also classed as summary
than the other. statistics. The mean (often called the
 average) is most likely the measure of
central tendency that you are most
familiar with, but there are others,
such as the median and the mode.
Mean
- The mean (also known as the x
arithmetic mean) is the most
commonly used measure of central
position. Variability

- It is the sum of measures divided by - Also called spread or dispersion refers

the number of measures in a variable. to how spread out a set of data is.
It is symbolized as ( x ) (read as x bar) - Variability gives you a way to describe
- It is also used to describe a set of data how much data sets vary and allows
where measures cluster or you to use statistics to compare your
concentrate at a point data to other sets of data. The four
main ways to describe variability in a
Weighted Mean data set are range, interquartile
range, variance and standard
- Occasionally, we want to find the deviation.
mean of a set of values wherein each
value or measurement has a different Range
weight or degree of importance. We
call as weighted mean and the formula  The difference between the highest
for computing is as follows: and lowest value in a set.
Interquartile Range
x w=
∑ wx
 Quartiles segment any distribution
∑w that's ordered from low to high into
four equal parts.
Where: w = the allocated weighted value Variance
x = the observed values  A measure of dispersion, meaning it is
a measure of how far a set of numbers
Median is spread out from their average value.
- The median is the middle entry or Standard Deviation
term in a set of data arranged in either
increasing or decreasing order.  A measure of the amount of variation
or dispersion of a set of values.
- The median is a positional measure.
Thus, the values of the individual  It is the square root of the variance
measures in as set of data do not
Modality
affect. It is affected by the number of
measures and not by the size of the - Modality of a distribution is
extreme values. determined by the number of peaks it
contains. Most distributions have only
Mode
one peak but it is possible that you
- The mode is another measure of encounter distributions with two or
position. more peaks.
- It is the measure or value which - It can be uni modal, bimodal and multi
occurs most frequently in a set of modal
data.
Skewness
- It is the value with the greatest
- a measure of the symmetry of a
frequency.
distribution. The highest point of a
Norman Distribution Curve distribution is its mode. The mode
marks the response value on the x-
- a continuous probability distribution axis that occurs with the highest
that is symmetrical on both sides of probability. A distribution is skewed if
the mean, so the right side of the the tail on one side of the mode is
center is a mirror image of the left fatter or longer than on the other: it is
side. asymmetrical.
- The normal distribution is often called
the bell curve because the graph of its
probability density looks like a bell.
Kurtosis
- Statistical measure that defines how
heavily the tails of a distribution differ
from the tails of a normal distribution.
In other words, kurtosis identifies
whether the tails of a given
distribution contain extreme values.