Basic concepts of Statistics

Slide 1
 Aims

1. Types of data analysis

2. Level of measurement
3. Descriptive statistics
4. Confidence interval
5. Type-I & Type-II Error
 Types of Data Analysis

Quantitative research is ‘Explaining phenomena by

collecting numerical data that are analysed using various
statistical techniques’

Statistical techniques can be classified as

1. Univariate, and
2. Multivariate techniques.

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 Types of Data Analysis
Qualitative Research provides insights and understanding of the
problem setting
1. Direct approach (Nondisguised)
• Depth interview
• Focus group

2. Indirect approach(Disguised): Projective techniques

• Association techniques
• Completion techniques
• Construction techniques
• Expressive techniques
 Level of measurement

• Nominal
• Ordinal
• Interval
• Ratio

Slide 5
 Nominal variable
There are two or more categories

Ex. Male or Female, Dead or Alive (Two

Categories )

Ex. Whether someone is Science, Commerce, or Arts

background.
 Ordinal variable

The same as a nominal variable but the categories

have a logical order

Whether a customers are very satisfied, satisfied,

neutral, dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied
 Interval variable

Equal intervals on the variable represent equal

differences in the property being measured

Ex. The difference between 6 and 8 is equivalent

to the difference between 13 and 15
 Ratio variable

The same as an interval variable, but the ratios of

scores on the scale must also make sense

Ex. A score of 16 on an anxiety scale means that

the person is, in reality, twice as anxious as
someone scoring 8.
 Descriptive statistics
1. Central tendency
• Mean
• Median
• Mode
2. Measures of dispersion
• Range
• Interquartile range
• Standard deviation
• Variance
3. Distribution
• Skewness
• Kurtosis
 
 Central tendency: Mean

The sum of scores divided by the number of

scores.

Example . HR score of nine participants

Mean =
(70+71+74+80+73+75+82+64+69)/9
= 73.11
 Central tendency: Median

The middle score when scores are ordered.

Example : HR score of nine participants

64, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 80, 82

Median is 73
 Central tendency: Mode

• Mode
– The most frequent score

• Bimodal
– Having two modes

• Multimodal
– Having several modes
 A Bimodal Distribution

Slide 14
 Measures of dispersion: Range
• The range measures the spread of the data. It is simply the
difference between the largest and smallest values in the sample.

Range = Xlargest – Xsmallest

64, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 80, 82

Maximum: 82

Minimum: 64

Range: 82-64 =18

Measures of dispersion: Interquartile Range

Quartiles
– The three values that split the sorted data into four equal parts.
– Second Quartile = median.
– Lower quartile = median of lower half of the data
– Upper quartile = median of upper half of the data
• The interquartile range is the difference between the
75th and 25th percentile. For a set of data points
arranged in order of magnitude, the pth percentile is
the value that has p% of the data points below it and
(100 - p)% above it.
 Measures of dispersion:Variance
• The sum of squares is a good measure of overall variability, but is
dependent on the number of scores.

• We calculate the average variability by dividing by the number of

scores (n).

• This value is called the variance (s2).

• The variance is the mean squared deviation from the mean. The variance
can never be negative.
Measures of dispersion:Standard Deviation
• The variance has one problem: it is measured in units squared.

• This isn’t a very meaningful metric so we take the square root value.

• This is the Standard Deviation (s).

n
(Xi - X)2
sx =   n-1
i =1
• The coefficient of variation is the ratio of the standard deviation to
the mean expressed as a percentage, and is a unitless measure of
relative variability.
CV = sx / X
 Frequency Distributions : Histograms

• Frequency Distributions

– A graph plotting values of observations on the horizontal axis,

with a bar showing how many times each value occurred in the
data set.

• The ‘Normal’ Distribution

– Bell shaped

– Symmetrical around the centre

Slide 20
 The Normal Distribution

Slide 21
 Properties of Frequency Distributions
• Skew: The symmetry of the distribution.

– Positive skew (scores bunched at low values with the tail

pointing to high values).
– Negative skew (scores bunched at high values with the tail
pointing to low values).
• Kurtosis: The ‘heaviness’ of the tails.

– Leptokurtic = heavy tails.

– Platykurtic = light tails.

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 Skew

Slide 23
 Kurtosis

Slide 24
 Normal distribution curve

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 Properties of z-scores

• 1.96 cuts off the top 2.5% of the distribution.

• −1.96 cuts off the bottom 2.5% of the distribution.

• As such, 95% of z-scores lie between −1.96 and 1.96.

• 99% of z-scores lie between −2.58 and 2.58,

• 99.9% of them lie between −3.29 and 3.29.

Slide 26
 Standard Errors

A sampling distribution is simply the frequency

distribution of sample means from the same
population. The standard deviation of sample means
is known as the standard error of the mean (SE).
  = 10

M = 10 M=9

M = 11 M = 10

ss
M=9 M=8 M = 12

M = 10
M = 11
XX 
4 M
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Frequency

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Slide 28
 Confidence Intervals
• Domjan et al. (1998)
– ‘Conditioned’ sperm release in Japanese Quail.
• True Mean
– 15 Million sperm
• Sample Mean
– 17 Million sperm
• Interval estimate
– 12 to 22 million (contains true value)
– 16 to 18 million (misses true value)
– CIs constructed such that 95% contain the true value.

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Slide 30
Slide 31
 One- and Two-Tailed Tests

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 Type I and Type II Errors

• Type I error

– occurs when we believe that there is a genuine effect in our

population, when in fact there isn’t.
– The probability is the α-level (usually .05)

• Type II error

– occurs when we believe that there is no effect in the population

when, in reality, there is.
– The probability is the β-level (often .2)

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 The SPSS Environment

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 Starting SPSS

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 The Data Editor

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 The Variable View

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 Variable Types
• Numeric
– Numbers (e.g. 7, 0, 120)
• String
– Letters (e.g. ‘Andy’, ‘Idiot’)
• Currency
– Currency (e.g. £20, $34, €56)
• Date
– Dates (e.g. 21-06-1973, 06-21-73, 21-Jun-1973)

Slide 38
 Creating a String Variable

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 Creating a Date Variable

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 Creating a Coding Variable

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 The Viewer Window

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 The Syntax Window

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