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Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009. Syllabus Course website Objectives Prerequisites Text Homeworks Class time Exams Grading Schedule. Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009. Basic Terms Statistical inference (Chapter 1.1 to 1.2) Variables and scales (Chapter 2.1)
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Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009 Syllabus • Course website • Objectives • Prerequisites • Text • Homeworks • Class time • Exams • Grading • Schedule
Sociology 601: Class 1, September 1 2009 Basic Terms • Statistical inference (Chapter 1.1 to 1.2) • Variables and scales (Chapter 2.1) • Randomization (2.2) • Sampling and non-sampling variability (2.3) • Sampling techniques (2.4)
Chapter 1.1 – 1.2 definitions (pages 3-5) • Descriptive Statistics:summary descriptions of a collection of data • Statistical Inferences: predictions or generalizations made from data • Sample: subset of the population on which the study collects data • Population: total set of subjects of interest in a study • Statistic: a numerical summary of sample data • Parameter: a numerical summary of a population
Choosing a Population: an example • The student government at the University of Maryland conducts a study about alcohol abuse among students. One hundred of the 33,000 members of the student body are sampled and asked to complete a questionnaire. One question is “On how many days in the past week did you consume at least one alcoholic drink?” • Q: What is the population of interest?
Populations • People in the United States • Countries, cities, census tracts • Years • Newspaper stories or TV shows • Organizations, social movements • Mixed: people over time
Chapter 2.1 definitions (pages 12-17) • variable: a characteristic that can vary among subjects in a population • race, age, sex, educational attainment • Q: is a characteristic a variable if it is fixed for an individual? (e.g. race) • constant: a characteristic that cannot vary among subjects in a population • One constant is the quality of being a member of the population (duh! - yet statistically important)
Chapter 2.1, Scales (pages 12-17) • Nominal scale: unordered, discrete categories, • (religious affiliation, vote) • Ordinal scale: naturally ordered, discrete categories • (social class -- upper, middle, lower) • Interval scale: variables whose values have a specific distance from one another. • (income is a continuous variable with an interval scale) • (number of times married is a discrete variable with an interval scale)
Dichotomous Variables • Any variable with only two categories • Examples: gender • Examples: Catholic • Examples: Middle class • Examples: Family income > $100K Q: Nominal, Ordinal, or Interval?
Chapter 2.1, useless definitions (pages 12-17) • Qualitative variables: = nominal scale of measurement. • Quantitative variables: = interval scale of measurement. • Categorical variables: includes all variables with nominal or ordinal scales