2022 Introduction to Statistics in Research Mitchell 2nd ed

I N T R O T O R E S E A R C H : D A T A V I S U A L I Z A T I O N & C O M M O N S T A T T E S T S

Chapter 2

VisualizingData – Step 1

This chapter is all about visualizing data. Graphical displays of data make it easier to spot patterns, detect unusual values and should always be how you present your data and findings.

Understanding your data types will help you choose a suitable summary statistic and analysis. Instead of leaping to hypothesis testing, you need to investigate the data with summary statistics and summary charts. Charts don’t need to be in statistical software (although they can). You can create most of the charts in Excel. Let’s take a minute to look at the types of data illustrated in the “Types of Data” infographic. Use your definition section to understand a term. Typically, we can divide data until two categories: scale and categorical. Scale can be either continuous or discrete and the types of summary statistics will depend on if the data is normally distributed or skewed. For categorical data type, you look at either ordinal or nominal.

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