Week Five:  Descriptive Statistics

Chat Room Discussions:  Sunday at 8 and Tuesday at 9:15.

This week will focus on descriptive statistics.  We will go over these in class after the midterm on October 4.

Requirements:
  1. Complete the Descriptive Statistics quiz at least once by 5 p.m. Friday October 10.  You will receive an attendance grade for completing the quiz so long as you answer all the items.  This version is open for unlimited tries.
  2. Complete the Descriptive Statistics quiz at least once by 2 p.m. on October 15 unless you are satisfied with your grade on the version submitted before October 10.  This version is open for unlimited tries.
  3. Your highest score on the quiz before Wednesday, October 15 at 2 p.m. will count.  If you have not completed it by this time you will get a zero - no excuses.  [the score you get before October 10 counts, of course].
There will be only one quiz/assignment this week.  It is a Descriptive Statistics quiz and it closes on Wednesday, October 15 at 2 p.m.  This quiz includes statistics items that must be computed as well as multiple choice items.  It can be taken and the highest score will count.  It is strongly recommended that you NOT wait until the last minute to do this assignment. No extensions or makeups will be provided for any student who does not try the quiz at least once by 5 p.m. Friday, October 10.


Study Materials:
  1. Babbie, Chapter 14
  2. Descriptive Statistics.   This page gives detailed examples of how to calculate descriptive statistics for continuous variables:  frequency distributions, mean, median, mode and standard deviation.  It can also be found in Google Docs. 
  3. There is a narrated powerpoint on Descriptive Statistics in Sakai/Resources/Week five.  You can also download an unnarated version, but it will be harder to follow without the audio.  This same powerpoint will be shown in class on October 4. The non-narrated version is also available in Google Docs. 
  4. Two excellent web sites explain scatterplots and give interactive examples:  Scatterplot and Line of Best Fit and Describing Relationships:  Scatterplot and Correlation. 
A video is available of Saturday's class.  It may be useful especially for those of you who missed it.  It was supposed to begin at 9:45, so the first 15 minutes may be students taking tests.   But you can scroll ahead..

You may view this video directly by accessing the following URL:
http://camlaw.rutgers.edu/av-request/2592/8337767edf

The audio recording has been added to the podcast for this course number. The PodCast URL is:

http://camlaw.rutgers.edu/podcast/999-95-1/f237c2ebf0/


Here are the calculations for item 14 on the Descriptive Stats exercise: