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Descriptive Statistics
Std.
N Minimum Maximum Mean Skewness Kurtosis
Deviation
PROS 100 -37.80 75.00 10.9470 2.2247 22.2466 .479 .241 .317 .478
DARTS 100 -43.00 72.90 4.5210 1.9388 19.3883 .770 .241 2.237 .478
DJIA 100 -13.10 22.50 6.7930 .8031 8.0315 -.280 .241 -.215 .478
Valid N
100
(listwise)
Commenting on the numerical data
Usually we won’t want to comment on all the numerical data, just the interesting
differences. Differences in means tell us that we might be able to find a statistically
significant difference later. Differences in standard deviations between categories can
violate the assumptions behind some parametric statistical tests and invalidate any
results we get.
The Pros had the highest mean increase in stock values (10.9) followed by the Dow
Jones Index (6.8) and the Darts (4.5). The Pros and Darts groups had similar standard
deviations (2.2 and 1.9 respectively) while the DJIA had a lower standard deviation
(0.8).
Correlational analysis
Correlational analysis can be performed by numerical analysis only but if you don’t
do a scatterplot it is easy to miss important trends such as non-linear relationships.
If you look carefully at these scatterplots you will see that there are only three unique
scatterplots but each is duplicated (for example, by correlating Pros with Darts as well
as Darts with Pros). Confusing! But it does allow you to inspect a lot of data to find
where correlations exist with a quick glance. This is what we want for exploratory
data analysis especially if we have a lot of variables to explore. Plots like this
shouldn’t be used where anyone might want to extract numeric data from the plot.
By looking at the numerical summaries of the correlations we can assess the
magnitude of a correlation. The magnitude of a correlation tells us how much of the
variance in one variable is explained by the variance in another variable.
CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION so all we can say is that the scores vary
together. Sometimes we have a third factor that is causing both of our correlated
variables to change. For example, an increase in the value of stocks of Pros does not
cause the value of the DJIA to increase. A rise in the stockmarket causes both to
change. Positive or negative correlations refer to the direction of the correlation.
Correlations
We can say:
The performance of the Pros’ stocks is moderately strongly positively correlated with
the performance of the DJIA stocks (a Pearson correlation of 0.538). The
performance of the Darts stocks is weakly positively correlated with the performance
of the Pros stocks (a Pearson Correlation of 0.324).