AP Stats Chapter 1 - 3 Vocabulary

Categorical Variable

places an individual into one of several groups or category

Quantitative Variable

numerical values for which it makes sense to find an average

Distribution

tells us what value a variable takes and how often it takes these values

Frequency Table

displays the counts or number of times a variable occurs

Relative Frequency Table

displays the percent of times a variable occurs

Symmetric

right and left sides of a graph are approximately mirror images

Skewed -

a graph having a long tail to the left or right

Mean

the average of the distribution

Median

the value in the middle of the distribution when data is ordered from least to greatest

Mode

the data which occurs the most in a distribution

Range

the difference between the highest and lowest value of a distribution

Interquartile Range

the distance between the 3rd and 1st quartiles

Outliers

Data that falls outside of the distribution and found by using the following: (IQR)1.5

Five Number Summary

consists of the smallest observation, the first quartile, the median, the third quartile and the largest observation

Standard Deviation

The average distance of the observations from their mean

Z-score

the standardized value that describes what fractional part of a standard deviation a value is from its mean

Empirical Rule

in a normal distribution it shows that 68-95-99.7 percent of the data is within 1,2 and 3 standard deviations

Percentile

a distribution of the values that fall a certain percent below this given value

Standard Normal Table

Table used to find the percent of data under the curve after converting a number into a z-score

Normal Probability Plot

a scatterplot of the z-scores against the explanatory variable that is used to suggest that the data is normal

Response Variable

the variable that measures the outcome of a study (y)

Explanatory Variable

the variable that may help explain or influence changes in a response variable (x)

Correlation r

measures the direction and strength of the linear relationship between two quantitative variables

Regression Line

a straight line that describes how a response variable y changes as an explanatory variable x changes

Extrapolation

The use of the regression line outside the range of the data from which it was calculated

Residual

The difference between the observed and the predicted values of y

Residual Plot

a scatterplot of the residuals against the explanatory variable used to determine if the regression line fits the data