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© 2014 Pacific Crest
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W
hat Do You Already Know?
Tapping into your existing knowledge
1. How do you describe the structure of a table to another person (i.e., the meaning of rows, columns,
labels, titles, legends and notes)?
2. How do you determine what units are used in the data in a table?
3. How do you determine the quality of the data that you are planning to use?
4. With respect to the Observed Occurrences of Distracted Driving table, what type of measurement
used in the data (ratio, interval, ordinal, nominal)?
5. How would you expect that the data in the Observed Occurrences table were collected? See if your
assumptions were correct by examining the report available at the companion website.
M
athematical Language
Terms and notation
bias
— a study has bias if the sample does not properly represent the entire population
confirmation bias
— the tendency to notice or focus on data that confirms our pre-existing beliefs
or assumptions; confirmation bias can affect not only what we notice in data, but how we analyze it
findings
— the evidence-based conclusions that result from a careful analysis of the data
generalize
— the findings for a small study can be extended or generalized to a larger population. In
order to do this one should have a random sample from that population.
inquiry questions
— the set of questions that may be answered by a careful examination and analysis
of the data
outlier
— a data point that is vastly different from the great majority of other data points
I
nformation
What you need to know
R
eadings
R
esources
7.3 Data Analysis