Wiki Page, Math 13 - Perez Sandbox : Module 10 - Introduction

Wiki Page
2026-01-17T21:15:07-08:00

The Big Picture

Before we begin this Unit, let's think about how it connects to what we have previously covered.

At the start of Unit 2, we stated the difference between quantitative and categorical variables:

Quantitative variables have numeric values that can be averaged. A quantitative variable is frequently a measurement—for example, a person’s height in inches.

Categorical variables are variables that can have one of a limited number of values, or labels. Values that can be represented by categorical variables include, for example, a person's eye color, gender, or home state; a vehicle's body style (sedan, SUV, minivan, etc.); a dog's breed (bulldog, greyhound, beagle, etc.).

For the remainder of Unit 2 we focused on describing the overall pattern (shape, center, spread and outliers) of the distribution of a quantitative variable. We also used a categorical variable as an explanatory variable to create two groups for comparison (e.g. gender), and we compared the distribution of the quantitative response variable for the two groups (e.g. credit card debt.)

In Unit 3 our goal was to identify and model the relationship between two quantitative variables.

Now, in Unit 4, we turn our full attention back to categorical variables.

We have two objectives:

Analyze the relationship between two categorical variables (part of exploring data)

Introduce probability (part of building the machinery for statistical inference)

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