ABSTRACT
To be successful in a statistics course, the student must be familiar with elementary algebra and basic mathematical operations, which most students learned during their high school years. A basic fact in statistics is that the procedure employs numerous symbols, and it is to the student's advantage to learn/memorize these symbols. In conducting a statistical analysis, the researcher must consider the measurements of the variables to be analyzed. Different variables may be measured differently, that is, on different scales. Most typically, variables in the behavioral sciences are measured on one of four scales: nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio measurements. Nominal scales embody the lowest level of measurement because the measurement involves simply categorizing the variable to be measured into one of a number of discrete categories. Ratio Scales level of measurement replaces the arbitrary zero point of the interval scales with a true zero starting point that corresponds to the absence of the variable being measured.
