Statistics for the Rest of Us: Mastering the Art of Understanding Data Without Math Skills (Advanced Thinking Skills Book 4)

the sample must be representative of the entire population, meaning it must share the same characteristics of it in the same proportions.

Think of the display as a puzzle that you are trying to figure out, and ask yourself the following questions: ● What is the title of the graph? ● If there are axes, what does each axis represent, and what is the scale of each axis? ● Can I pick one data point and figure out what it represents? ● What is the shape of the data? Does it show a certain

Pitfall #1: Ignoring scale

clean. Cleaning data is exactly what it sounds like: looking through it to make sure it doesn't have any errors or duplicates, that it was collected accurately, and that it's in the right format for your computer (or you) to analyze.[xvi]

Sample: a representative subset of a population. Samples are used in studies because they are much more manageable than entire populations.

Pitfall #3: Confusing Correlation with Causation

In your everyday life, you don’t need to know the formula or even have a solid mathematical understanding of the theorem to use its basic principle.

This chapter will look at five common pitfalls in statistics and how you, the average consumer, can recognize them.

Pitfall #2: Looking at the wrong measure of center