Question

During this week's reading we encountered a lot of new vocabulary. I usually don't quiz students on definitions of statistics vocabulary. I think it is much more useful for students to have an understanding of what terms mean rather than have them memorize definitions (which they soon forget). I want us to get in the practice of of putting meanings of new vocabulary in our own words, using our own examples to illustrate meanings to us. That will make these concepts more meaningful and they will stay with us longer than if we just memorize definitions.

One way that I have found helpful in doing this is to compare vocabulary words that are related but represent different things. This week's discussion forum will give you an opportunity to try this process. For this week's discussion I have identified three sets of related terms. Here they are:

1) Population vs. Sample

2) Quantitative Data vs. Qualitative Data

3) Mean, Median, Mode

Here are the instructions for this week's discussion:

If your last name begins with the letters A through F, your initial post will be to describe, in your own words, similarities and differences of :1) Population vs. Sample.

If your last name begins with the letters G through R, your initial post will be to describe, in your own words, similarities and differences of: 2) Quantitative Data vs. Qualitative Data.

If your last name begins with the letters S through Z, your initial post will be to describe, in your own words, similarities and differences of: 3) Mean, Median, Mode.

For your follow-up posts, respond to at least one person from each of the other groups. For example, if your initial post was about Quantitative Data vs. Qualitative Data, then you would respond to one person's original post about Population vs. Statistic and one person's original post about Mean, Median, Mode. Your responses to these others' posts will address the content of the original post. That is, was their explanation helpful? Were their examples clear?, Do you have any questions about what they wrote? Don't just say that you liked (or didn't like) their post.

Answer 1

• Quantitative Data

Quantities that can be measured in numbers come under Quantitative Data. The data can be continuous as well as discrete.

Discrete random variable i.e discrete data can take only whole numbers as their values.

For e.g. My data can be

1. Number of accidents on a road each day. ( they can be 0 , 1 , 2 , etc)
2. Number of members in each household in my city. ( 1 , 2 , 3 , etc)

Continuous data can take any real number between consecutive whole numbers as their values.

For e.g. Data can be

1. Prices of fuel per litre at different locations.( 70.2 , 80.6 , etc )
2. Weight of patients in kg visiting the hospital in a day. (40.2 , 55.9 , 68 , etc)

• Qualitative Data

Characteristics or data which cannot be measured but has categories is qualitative data. Nominal and Ordinal are its scales of measurements.

Nominal scale groups objects into fixed categories all of which are at same level / considered to have no difference.

For e.g

1. Sex of a person (Male , Female , Other )
2. Classifying people according to thier countries.

Ordinal scale groups objects into categories all of which are not at same level using some quantifiable measure.

For e.g.

1. Reviews which are taken in ranks 1 2 3 ,where 1 is satisfying , 2 neutral and 3 not satisfying.
2. Grouping students as short , medium and tall according to thier heights

where sequence of these categories cannot be changed.

• Similarities between Qualiltative and quantitative data

1. They both can be represented using different graphs. For e.g Sexwise data with bar graph whereas prices of fuel with histogram.
2. Mode ( measure of central tendency) can be calculated for both kinds of data.