ABSTRACT
Researchers commonly report statistics describing the location of a distribution of sample data, as well as the amount of spread in the scores, and statisticians always encourage graphing to reveal patterns in the data. Statistics that measure the center and spread can be combined to measure where a particular score is located in a sample distribution of scores. For example, patients often want to know whether their results on a lab test are average; if the results are not average, patients want to know how far above or below average their results are. Comparing a score to a mean is part of measuring relative location, typically defined as a score’s position on the number line in relation to the mean. The mean might be a sample mean or the mean of a specific population, such as people who are the same age, sex, and weight as a patient. Some variables in the population have distributions with a special shape, which we will discuss toward the end of the chapter.
