PSYC 300 chapter 1&2

why is the standard deviation more often used as a descriptive statistic than the variance

The standard deviation gives a more direct sense of the variability of the data since it has the same dimensions as the data values themselves rather than the squares of the data values

in samples the mean is represented by

X̅ or M

A participant in a cognitive psychology study is given 50 words to remember and later asked to recall as many of the words as she can. She recalls 17 words. what is the variable?

amount of words that the participant can recall

susan collected data from 76 students who filled out a questionnaire about exercise and GPA. from the exercise portion, students were classified as sedentary, moderate, or vigorous exercisers. what is the independent variable

exercise classification

describe the general shape of the distribution for a histogram that has more large bars on the left hand side of the graph.

it is skewed to the right

what is definition of standard deviation?

it is the average amount that the amount of increase in activation differs from the mean value

what is the definition of mean?

it is the average or center value in the distribution of the amount of increase of whatever someone is looking at

describe variance

it is the average squared deviation from the mean

describe standard deviation

it is the square root of the variance or roughly the average deviation from the mean

to show the relationship between serial position of words on a list and errors, the proper graph is a ___ graph

line

skewed and multimodal distribution in a graph will have

many different curves

for continuous data that are positively skewed, the ___ is usually smaller than the ___

mean, median

the ___ is the high point in the distribution's histogram

mode

what is the measure of central tendency for nominal variables

mode

psychologists measure parenting style as: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. parenting style is measure with a ___ variable

nominal

unimodal and symmetrical distribution in a graph will have

one curve at the top; you can draw a line through it and it would be even on both sides

for ____ data, a median is an appropriate measure of central tendancy

ordinal

what value describes a population

parameter

grouped frequency distributions and simple frequency distributions differ in

range of scores covered by the distribution

on a ____ scale, zero means that no amount was present

ratio

a ____ is a characteristic of a sample

statistic

A client rates her satisfaction with her vocational counselor as a 3 on a​ 4-point scale from 1=not at all satisfied to 4=very satisfied. what is the variable?

the client's satisfaction with her vocational counselor

janna gathered data from 47 students, who filled out self-consciousness scale. scores in this scale range from 0-66. in addition, janna classified each student's height as shore, average, or tall. what is the dependent variable?

the self-consciousness scale

a bimodal distribution in a graph will have

two curves at the top

in populations the mean is represented by

μ

in which of the following examples is the median the preferred measure of central tendency?

-distribution of annual household income -distribution of the number of children in a household

A participant in a cognitive psychology study is given 50 words to remember and later asked to recall as many of the words as she can. She recalls 17 words. what are the possible values?

0-50

A client rates her satisfaction with her vocational counselor as a 3 on a​ 4-point scale from 1=not at all satisfied to 4=very satisfied. what are the possible values?

1, 2, 3, 4

if the standard deviation is 4, the variance is

16

A participant in a cognitive psychology study is given 50 words to remember and later asked to recall as many of the words as she can. She recalls 17 words. what is the score?

17

A client rates her satisfaction with her vocational counselor as a 3 on a​ 4-point scale from 1=not at all satisfied to 4=very satisfied. what is the client's score?

3

from Janna's experiment, what is the number of levels of the independent variable?

3

what is meant by a symmetrical unimodal distribution?

A distribution is a pattern of frequencies for the various values of a variable collected in a study. A symmetric unimodal distribution is a distribution where there is one value with a larger frequency than any other and the pattern of frequencies on the left and right of this larger frequency are mirror images of each other.

what is meant by a negatively skewed unimodal distribution?

A negatively skewed unimodal distribution is a distribution in which the left side of the distribution is long and spread​ out, somewhat like a tail. On the right side of the​ distribution, there is one value that clearly has a larger frequency than any other value.