DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
© James A. Geffert 2004
The purpose of this part of this week's lecture is to briefly review some things you have probably studied over and over but have forgotten. Well, maybe not forgotten, but have shoved into the back of your memory banks. These measures are generally termed "descriptive statistics", and are used to give more precise meaning to observations which might otherwise be stated as, "a whole bunch of 'em right over there."
Every collection of things that we measure exhibits two characteristics that interest us. First, things cluster together. Most things of interest are more alike than they are different. We call this characteristic "central tendency". The peaches I'm now picking from the tree in my back yard all look pretty much the same. It's easy to distinguish them from apples, say, or basketballs, or plums. They are all about "peach size", all have a color shading from a light green to a nice peachy color. They all weigh......
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