Measurement
The act of assigning numbers or symbols to characteristics of things according to rules
Scale
A set of numbers whose properties model empirical properties of the objects to which the numbers are assigned
Continous Scale
A scale used to measure a continous variable (value is obtained by measuring) ex: height, weight, blood pressure
Discrete Scale
Used to measure a discrete variable (value is obtained by counting or categorising) ex: number of students in a classroom students can be individually counted, but you can’t have a fraction of a student (there’s no 1.5 and so on)
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What are the 3 property of Scales
Magnitude (Ordinal, Interval, Ratio)
Equal Intervals (Interval, Ratio)
A scale has this property if the difference between 2 points of any place on the scale has the same meaning as the difference between 2 other points that differ the same number of scale units
Absolute Zero (Ratio)
Obtained when nothing of the property being measured exists.
4 Levels of Scales of Measurement
Nominal Scales (Have none of the 3 properties)
Ordinal Scales (With magnitude only)
Interval Scales
Ratio Scales (Magnitude, Equal Interval, Absolute Zero)
What are the Permissible Operations
Nominal Data
Frequency distribution; but no mathematical manipulations of the data are permissible
Ordinal
Can be manipulated using arithmetic; However, the result is often difficult to interpret because it reflects neither the magnitudes nor the true amounts of the property that have been measured.
Interval
One can apply any arithmetic operation to the differences between scores (but you cannot say IQ is twice higher than IQ of 80 because there’s no absolute zero point)
RATIO
Any mathematical operation is permissible
Frequency Distribution
Way of representing data from a frequency table. Might be listed in a tabular or graphic form (eg. Normal Distribution Curve, Skewed Distribution Curve)
Simple Frequency Distribution
An individual scores that have been used and the data have not been grouped.
eg. say a poll asks 100 people how many pets they have. They find that 38 people have no pets, 25 have one pet, 17 have two pets, 6 have three pets, and 14 have four or more pets
Grouped Frequency Distribution
For most distributions of test scores, the frequency distribution is bell shaped, with the greatest frequency of scores toward the center and decreasing scores as the values become greater or less than the value in the center of the distribution.
Search for Bell Shape Distribution
Type of Distributions
Bell-shaped Distribution, Bimodal Distribution, Skewed Distribution Curve (Left Skewed are Low Scores, Right Skewed are High Scores) J-Shaped Curve, and Rectangular Distribution