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  3. Intro to Statistics with R: Introduction
  • 1

    Variables

    In this chapter professor Conway will cover types of variables. It is very important to understand what type of variable you are dealing with when conducting a particular type of statistical analysis. You will cover variables such as nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio, and you will experiment with these via interactive exercises in R.

  • 2

    Histograms and Distributions

    You will look here at distributions in graphs called histograms. A histogram is one of the simplest graphs used in statistics, but they are very useful and very informative. Studying histograms will help you to overcome the tendency to put too much of a focus on summary statistics.

  • 3

    Scales of Measurement

    When working with data it is very important to keep in mind what type of scale you are dealing with, hence this chapter on scales of measurement. This chapter will introduce you to the different types of scales with a specific focus on the standard scale, the z-scale.

  • 4

    Measures of Central Tendency

    In the previous chapters you looked at distributions and the importance of these. In this chapter the focus is more on summarizing all available information and drafting summary statistics. To make it a little bit more fun, the examples will be based on a wine tasting experiment :-).

  • 5

    Measures of Variability

    Measures of central tendency try to capture the center point of a distribution. Measures of variability want to capture how much spread there is, or how wide the distribution is. The two measures you will look at in this final chapter will be standard deviation and variance.

Initializing

Exercise

Michael Jordan's first NBA season

Michael Jordan was one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Not only did he win six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls, but he was selected as the Most Valuable Player (MVP) in five different seasons.

You want to explore the performances of "Air Jordan" in terms of points per game in his first season. You are especially interested in the variability of points scored over course of the season.

Instructions

100 XP
  • data_jordan, which is available in your workspace, contains Michael Jordan's points per game in his first NBA season. Print the data to the console.
  • Use the plot() function to make a scatterplot of the points column. Use the main argument to title the plot "Michael Jordan's first season"
  • Calculate the mean() points per game and save the result to mean_jordan
  • Add a horizontal line to the plot to show the mean points per game using the abline() function with one argument: h (for "horizontal"). For example, abline(h = 7) would create a horizontal line at the value 7.