Introduction and measurement
Content for Tuesday, January 5, 2027
Goals
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Say what the course is for: reading and explaining statistics in education research
- Tell description, prediction and explanation apart
- Separate a population from a sample, and a parameter from an estimate
- Name a study’s variables, and say which scale each one uses
Reading
- Chapter 1 in Essentials of Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. Read it before our first class if you can, or by Thursday. You can skip real limits (in 1-2).
NoteThe book and our slides
- The book: calls a number computed from a sample a statistic. Our slides: call it an estimate, because it estimates a population value. Greek letters (μ, σ) mean the population in both. On our slides, a Latin letter or a hat (σ̂) means an estimate.