Statistical Vocab
The entire group of a study?
Population
Names of students in a class.
Nominal
You want to test if flowers grow better in a new soil.
Experiment
To see how students feel about the new bell sound, a principal goes to the cafeteria and asks the students there.
Convenience
A subset of the population
Sample
Number of strikes thrown by a pitcher.
Ratio
Researchers want to see how kids conduct problem-resolution on the playground.
Observational study
To gauge parent satisfaction, a school district with 15 elementary schools asks all the parents from 5 schools how they are feeling about the school year.
Cluster
Data from the entire population
Parameter
The amount of money someone spends per year on fast food.
Ratio
Study the effect of hot dogs when they are put in the freezer and then put in the microwave.
Experiment
To get the school's average GPA, a teacher selects 10 students from each grade level for her sample group.
Stratefied
Data from part of a population.
Statistic
The years that a team won the Superbowl.
Interval
A city council wants to see how adding a road to bypass the highway would impact traffic.
Simulation
Every person at an event is given a raffle ticket and four winners are selected at the end of the night.
Simple Random
Describes attributes or characteristics.
Quantitative or qualitative
Qualitative
Tornado ratings
Ordinal
A doctor wants to know how the 102 flu patients at his hospital are feeling.
Survey
To maintain quality control at a milk plant, every 50th bottle of milk coming off the production line was open and tested.
Systematic