Utilization of Assessment
Utilization of Assessment
Utilization of Assessment
The field of statistics is divided into two major divisions: descriptive and
inferential. Each of these segments is important, offering different techniques
that accomplish different objectives. Descriptive statistics describe what is going
on in a population or data set. Inferential statistics, by contrast, allow scientists
to take findings from a sample group and generalize them to a larger population.
Descriptive Statistics
The average, or measure of the center of a data set, consisting of the mean,
median, mode, or midrange
The spread of a data set, which can be measured with the range or standard
deviation
Overall descriptions of data such as the five number summary
Measurements such as skewness and kurtosis
The exploration of relationships and correlation between paired data
The presentation of statistical results in graphical form
These measures are important and useful because they allow scientists to
see patterns among data, and thus to make sense of that data. Descriptive
statistics can only be used to describe the population or data set under
study: The results cannot be generalized to any other group or population.
There are two kinds of descriptive statistics that social scientists use:
Measures of central tendency capture general trends within the data and are
calculated and expressed as the mean, median, and mode. A mean tells scientists
the mathematical average of all of a data set, such as the average age at first
marriage; the median represents the middle of the data distribution, like the age
that sits in the middle of the range of ages at which people first marry; and, the
mode might be the most common age at which people first marry.
Measures of spread describe how the data are distributed and relate to each
other, including:
Measures of spread are often visually represented in tables, pie and bar
charts, and histograms to aid in the understanding of the trends within the
data.
Inferential Statistics