PSY340: Statistics for the Social Sciences

Part I: give some datasets and have them compute some basic descriptive statistics

a) Below are the data from students asked how many hours they had studied the previous weekend:
11,2,0,13,5,7,1,8,12,11,7,8,9,10,4,7,8,6,7,10,7,3,11,18,2,9,7,3,7,8,3,13,9,8,7,7,10,4,15,3,5,6,9,7,10,6
Compute the mean and standard deviation for these data (assume that the data are from a sample).
What z-score corresponds a raw score of 10?
There are a lot of numbers here so I recommend that you use a spread sheet program (e.g., Excel) or SPSS to do all of the math (all the subtracting and squaring, etc.).

b) Below are the number of minutes it took each of a group of 10-year-olds to do a series of abstract puzzles:
24,84,36,22,81,39,60,62,38,36,66,38,45,20,20,67,41,87,41,82,35,82,28,80,80,68,40,27,43,80,31,89,83,24
Compute the mean and standard deviation for these data (assume that the data are from a sample).
What z-score corresponds a raw score of 62?
There are a lot of numbers here so I recommend that you use a spread sheet program (e.g., Excel) or SPSS to do all of the math (all the subtracting and squaring, etc.).

c) For both (a) and (b), do you think that the mean is the best measure of center for these distributions? Why or why not?

a) Compute the median, mean, variance, and standard deviation for each of the variables. (there are a number of different menus in SPSS that will get you this stuff. The simplest place is to select 'Descriptive statistics' under the 'Analyze menu', and select 'frequency.' Then click the 'statistics' button. Finally select the statistics that you want computed.)