Research Methods 2
Week 3: Descriptive Statistics
Aims
To introduce the idea of summarising data either by
using appropriate statistics or graphs.
Objectives
To be able to calculate and interpret the median
and quartiles of a sample of data
To be able to draw a boxplot and histogram of
the sample.
To be able to compute and interpret the mean
and standard deviation of a sample.
Note: you will need to use Minitab to perform the
calculations set in the exercises this week. This will help you to consolidate
the skills you learnt last week in Introduction
to Minitab.
The first part of the work this week is to do with
using numbers to summarise data and comprises the following.
When you have done this you should turn to graphical
summaries of data, as follows.
Further reading on the topics addressed this week
can be found in Bland, sections 4.4-4.7.
There is no formal assessment this week.
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