Final Reviewer Educ7a
Final Reviewer Educ7a
Final Reviewer Educ7a
tools to improve the teaching-learning process. It emphasizes on the use of testing for
measuring knowledge, comprehension and other thinking skills.
Types of Measurement
Objective (as in testing) - measurements that do not depend on the person or individual
taking the measurements. Regardless of who is taking the measurement, the same
measurement values should be obtained when using an objective assessment procedure.
Subjective (as in perceptions) – often differ from one assessor to the next even if the
same quantity or quality is being measured. (aesthetic appeal of a product or project,
drama performance, etc.)
Measurement of quantity or quality of interest = true value + random error
3. End of Instruction
Summative Assessment (assessment OF learning) is given
at the end of the course or unit to determine the extent to which the instructional objectives
have been met. The effectiveness of the summative assessment depends on the validity and
reliability of the activity and tools.
Assessment AS learning is associated with self-assessment. Students sets their target,
actively monitor and evaluate their own learning in relation to their set target. They become
self-directed and independent learners.
To summarize,
we measure height, distance, weight, knowledge of subject matter through
testing;
we assess learning outcome;
we evaluate results in terms of some criteria or objectives
Measurement refers to the process by which the attributes or dimension of some objects
or subjects of study are determined.
Assessment is a process of selecting, receiving and using data for the purpose of
improvement in the current Performance. One of the primary measurement tools in
education
Evaluation is an act of passing judgement on the basis of a set of standards. In education,
evaluation is the process of using the measurements gathered in the assessment to judge
the relationship between what was intended by the instruction and what was learned
Measurements are more objective as they have numerical standards to compare and
record. Evaluation could be seen to be more subjective as the evaluator and measures used
are part of human sciences and performance related.
Lesson 2.4. Assessment FOR, OF and AS Learning: Approaches to Assessment
Assessment of Learning
The predominant kind of assessment in schools is Assessment of Learning. Its purpose is summative,
intended to certify learning and report to parents and students about students’ progress in school,
usually by signalling students’ relative position compared to other students. Assessment of Learning in
classrooms is typically done at the end of something (eg, a unit, course, a grade, a Key Stage, a
program) and takes the form of tests or exams that include questions drawn from the material studied
during that time. In Assessment of Learning, the results are expressed symbolically, generally as
marks across several content areas to report to parents.
Marking is not designed to make comparative judgments among the students but to
highlight each students’ strengths and weaknesses and provide them with feedback that will
further their learning.
When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, the summative. - Robert Stake
In reality, it is through classroom assessment that attitudes, skills, knowledge and thinking are fostered, nurtured and
accelerated – or stifled. -Hynes (1991)
Recordkeeping in this approach may include a grade book, but the records on which
teachers rely are things like checklists of student’s progress against expectations, artefacts,
portfolios of students work over time, and worksheets to trace the progression of students
along the learning continuum.
Assessment as Learning
Assessment for Learning can go a long way in enhancing student learning. By introducing the notion of
Assessment as Learning intends to reinforce and extends the role of formative assessment for
learning by emphasizing the role of the student, not only as a contributor to the assessment and
learning process, but also as the critical connector between them. This is the regulatory process in
metacognition. It occurs when students personally monitor what they are learning and use
the feedback from this monitoring to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major
changes in what they understand. Assessment as Learning is the ultimate goal, where students
are their own best assessors.
Assumption: Self-assessment is at the heart of the matter.
Assessment alone changes little. Its greatest contribution comes on campuses where
the quality of teaching and learning is visibly valued and worked at. On such
campuses, the push to improve educational performance is a visible and primary goal
of leadership; improving the quality of undergraduate education is central to the
institution's planning, budgeting, and personnel decisions.
9. Through assessment, educators meet responsibilities to students and to the
public.
There is a compelling public stake in education. As educators, we have a responsibility
to the publics that support or depend on us to provide information about the ways in
which our students meet goals and expectations. But that responsibility goes beyond
the reporting of such information; our deeper obligation -- to ourselves, our students,
and society -- is to improve.
Authentic assessments refer to assessments (non-paper-and-pencil test) wherein students are asked to
perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of what they have learned. It is also
called alternative assessment
Examples:
Product Output (visual-graph, collage, reflective-journal, reports, papers, research projects)
Performance tasks (experiments, oral presentation, dramatization)
- Examples of performance tests are executing steps of tango, delivering a keynote speech,
opening a computer, deomonstration teaching, etc.)
Types of Portfolio
Portfolios can be classified according to purpose. According to purpose, portfolios can be
classified either as l) working portfolios. 2) display portfolios or 3) assessment portfolios,
(Introduction to Using Portfolios in the Classroom by Charlotte Danielson and Leslye
Abrutyn)
A working portfolio is so named because it is a project "in the works." containing work in
progress as well as finished samples of work. A growth portfolio demonstrates an
individual's development and growth over time. Development can be focused on academic
or thinking skills, content knowledge, self-knowledge, or any area that is important for your
purposes. For this reason, it is also called development portfolio. Growth or development
portfolio can serve as a holding tank for work that may be selected later for a more
permanent assessment or display portfolio.
It is the display of the students' best work. Students exhibit their best work and interpret its
meaning. Showcase portfolio demonstrates the highest level of achievement attained by the
student.
A rubric is a coherent set of criteria for students’ work that includes descriptions of levels of
performance quality on the criteria. The purpose of rubrics is to assess performance made
evident in processes and products. It can serve as a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a
student’s performance tasks. An objective type of test can be scored by simply counting the
correct answers but the essay tests, student’s products and performances cannot be scored
the way objective tests are being scored. Products and performances need scoring rubrics
for the score to be reliable.
Analytic rubrics
Example. We want to construct a test on the topic: “Subject-Verb Agreement in English” for
a Grade V class. The following are typical objectives:
Knowledge/Remembering. The students must be able to identify the subject and the
verb in a given sentence.
Comprehension/Understanding. The students must be able to determine the appropriate
form of a verb to be used given the subject of a sentence.
Application/Applying. The students must be able to write sentences observing rules on
subject-verb agreement.
Analysis/Analyzing. The students must be able to break down a given sentence into its
subject and predicate.
Evaluation/Evaluating. The students must be able to evaluate whether or not a sentence
observes rules on subject-verb agreement
Synthesis/Creating. The students must be able to formulate rules to be followed
regarding the subject-verb agreement.
A. TRUE-FALSE TEST
Binomial-choice tests are tests that have only two (2) options such as true or false, right
or wrong, good or better and so on.
Rule 1: Do not give a hint (inadvertently) in the body of the question.
Example: The Philippines gained its independence in 1898 and therefore celebrated its
centennial year in 2000. ______
Obviously, the answer is FALSE because 100 years from 1898 is not 2000 but 1998.
Rule 2: Avoid using the words “always”, “never” “often” and other adverbs that
tend to be either always true or always false.
Statements that use the word “always” are almost always false. A test-wise student can
easily guess his way through a test like these and get high scores even if he does not
know anything about the test.
Rule 3: Avoid long sentences as these tend to be “true”. Keep sentences short.
Example: Tests need to be valid, reliable and useful, although, it would require a great
amount of time and effort to ensure that tests possess these test characteristics. _______
Notice that the statement is true. However, we are also not sure which part of the
sentence is deemed true by the student. It is just fortunate that in this case, all parts of the
sentence are true and hence, the entire sentence is true. The following example illustrates
what can go wrong in long sentences:
Example: Tests need to be valid, reliable and useful since it takes very little amount of
time, money and effort to construct tests with these characteristics.
The first part of the sentence is true but the second part is debatable and may, in fact, be
false. Thus, a “true” response is correct and also, a “false” response is correct.
Rule 4. Avoid trick statements with some minor misleading word or spelling
anomaly, misplaced phrases, etc.
A wise student who does not know the subject matter may detect this strategy and
thus get the answer correctly.
Example: True or False. The Principle of our school is Mr. Albert P. Panadero.
The Principal’s name may actually be correct but since the word is misspelled and the
entire sentence takes a different meaning, the answer would be false! This is an example
of a tricky but utterly useless item.
Rule 5: Avoid quoting verbatim from reference materials or textbooks. This
practice sends the wrong signal to the students that it is necessary to memorize the
textbook word for word and thus, acquisition of higher level thinking skills is not
given due importance.
Rule 6. Avoid specific determiners or give-away Qualifiers. Students quickly learn
that strongly worded statements are more likely to be false than true, for example,
statements with “never” “no” “all” or “always.” Moderately worded statements are
more likely to be true than false. Statements with “many” “often” “sometimes”
“generally” ‘frequently” or “some” should be avoided.
A generalization of the true-false test, the multiple-choice type of test offers the student
with more than two (2) options per item to choose from. Each item in a multiple-choice
test consists of two parts: (a) the stem, and (b) the options. In the set of options, there is
a “correct” or “best” option while all the others are considered “distracters”. The
distracters are chosen in such a way that they are attractive to those who do not know the
answer or are guessing but at the same time, have no appeal to those who actually know
the answer. It is this feature of multiple-choice type tests that allow the teacher to test
higher-order thinking skills even if the options are clearly stated. As in true-false items,
there are certain rules of thumb to be followed in constructing multiple-choice tests.
Guidelines in constructing Multiple Choice Items
Rule 1: Do not use unfamiliar words, terms and phrases. The ability of the item to
discriminate or its level of difficulty should stem from the subject matter rather than from
the wording of the question.
Example: What would be the system reliability of a computer system whose slave and
peripherals are connected in parallel circuits and each one has a known time to failure
probability of 0.05?
A student completely unfamiliar with the terms “slave” and “peripherals”may not be able
to answer correctly even if he knew the subject matter of reliability.
Rule 2: Do not use modifiers that are vague and whose meanings can differ from
one person to the next such as: much, often, usually, etc.
Example: Much of the process of photosynthesis takes place in the:
a. bark b. leaf c. stem
The qualifier “much” is vague and could have been replaced by more specific qualifiers
like:” 90% of the photosynthetic process” or some similar phrase that would be more
precise. Be quantitative
Rule 3: Avoid complex or awkward word arrangements. Also, avoid use of negatives
in the stem as this may add unnecessary comprehension difficulties.
Example:
(Poor) As President of the Republic of the Philippines, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino would
stand next to which President of the Philippine Republic subsequent to the 1986 EDSA
Revolution?
(Better) Who was the President of the Philippines after Corazon C. Aquino?
Rule 5: Each item stem should be as short as possible; otherwise you risk testing
more for reading and comprehension skills.
Example:
As compared to the autos of the 1960s autos in the 1980s ______
a. Traveling slower b. bigger interiors c. to use less fuel
d. contain more safety measures
Option A, B and C are obviously wrong for the language smart because when added to
the stem the sentence is grammatically wrong. D is the only option which when
connected to the stem retains the grammatical accuracy of the sentence, thus obviously is
the correct answer
Example: If the three angles of two triangles are congruent, then the triangles are:
a. congruent whenever one of the sides of the triangles are congruent
b. similar
c. equiangular and therefore. must also be congruent
d. equilateral if they are equiangular
The correct choice, “b,” may be obvious from its length and explicitness alone. The other
choices are long and tend to explain why they must be the correct choices forcing the
students to think that they are, in fact, not the correct answers!
Rule 9: Avoid stems that reveal the answer to another item.
Rule 10: Avoid alternatives that are synonymous with others or those that, include
or overlap others.
Example: What causes ice to transform from solid state to liquid state’?
a. Change in temperature
b. Changes in pressure
c. Change in the chemical composition
d. Change in heat levels
The options a and d are essentially the same. Thus, a student who spots these identical
choices would right away narrow down the field of choices to a, b, and c. The last
distracter would play no significant role in increasing the value of the item.
Rule 11: Avoid presenting sequenced items in the same order as in the text.
Rule 12: Avoid use of assumed qualifiers that many examinees may not be aware of.
Rule 13: Avoid use of unnecessary words or phrases, which are not relevant to the
problem at hand (unless such discriminating ability is the primary intent of the
evaluation). The items value is particularly damaged if the unnecessary material is
designed to distract or mislead. Such items test the student’s reading comprehension
rather than knowledge of the subject matter.
Example: The side opposite the thirty degree angle in a right triangle is equal to half the
length of the hypotenuse. If the sine of a 30-degree is 0.5 and its hypotenuse is 5, what is
the length of the side opposite the 30-degree angle?
a. 2.5 b. 3.5 c. 5.5 d. 1.5
The sine of a 30-degree angle is really quite unnecessary since the first sentence already
gives the method for finding the length of the side opposite the thirty-degree angle. This
is a case of a teacher who wants to make sure that no student in his class gets the wrong
answer!
Rule 14: Avoid use of non-relevant sources of difficulty such as requiring a complex
calculation when only knowledge of a principle is being tested.
Note in the previous example, knowledge of the sine of the 30-degree angle would have
led some students to use the sine formula for calculation even if a simpler approach
would have sufficed.
Rule 15: Avoid extreme specificity requirements in responses.
Rule 16: Include as much of the item as possible in the stem. This allows for less
repetition and shorter choice options.
Rule 17: Use the “None of the above” option only when the keyed answer is totally
correct.
When choice of the “best” response is intended, “none of the above” is not
appropriate, since the implication has already been made that the correct response
may be partially inaccurate.
Rule 18: Note that the use of “all of the above” may allow credit for partial
knowledge.
In a multiple option item, (allowing only one option choice) if a student only knew
that two (2) options were correct, he could then deduce the correctness of “all of the
above”. This assumes you are allowed only one correct choice.
Rule 19: Having compound response choices may purposefully increase difficulty of
an item.
Rule 20: The difficulty of a multiple choice item may be controlled by varying the
homogeneity or degree of similarity of responses.
The more homogeneous, the more difficult the item.
Example:
(Less Homogeneous) Thailand is located in:
a. Southeast Asia b. Eastern Europe c. South America
d. East Africa e. Central America
(More Homogeneous) Thailand is located next to:
a. Laos and Kampuchea b. India and China
c. China and Malaya d. Laos and China
e. India and Malaya
C. CONSTRUCTING MATCHING TYPE AND SUPPLY TYPE ITEMS
The matching type items may be considered as modified multiple-choice type items
where the choices progressively reduce as one successfully matches the items on the left
with the items on the right.
The data sufficiency test above can, if properly constructed, test higher-order thinking
skills. Each item goes beyond simple recall of facts and, in fact, requires the students to
make decisions.
Another useful device for testing lower-order thinking skills is the supply type of tests.
Like the multiple-choice test, the items in this kind of test consist of a stem and a blank
where the students would write the correct answer.
Example: The study of life and living organisms is called __________.
Supply type tests depend heavily on the way that the stems are constructed. These tests
allow for one and only one answer and, hence, often test only the students’ knowledge. It
is , however, possible to construct supply type of tests that will test higher order
thinking as the following example shows:
Example: Write an appropriate synonym for each of the following. Each blank
corresponds to a letter:
Metamorphose: _ _ _ _ _ _
Flourish: _ _ _ _
The appropriate synonym for the first is CHANGE with six(6) letters while the
appropriate synonym for the second is GROW with four (4) letters. Notice that these
questions require not only mere recall of words but also understanding of these words.
D. CONSTRUCTING ESSAY TESTS
Rule 1: Phrase the direction in such a way that students are guided on the key
concepts to be included. Specify how the students should respond
Example: Write an essay on the topic: “Plant Photosynthesis” using the following
keywords and phrases: chlorophyll, sunlight, water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, by-product,
stomata.
Note that the students are properly guided in terms of the keywords that the teacher is
looking for in this essay examination. An essay such as the one given below will get a
score of zero (0). Why?
Plant Photosynthesis
Nature has its own way of ensuring the balance between food producers and consumers.
Plants are considered producers of food for animals. Plants produce food _for animals
through a process called photosynthesis. It is a complex process that combines various
natural elements on earth into the final product which animals can consume in order to
survive. Naturally, we all need to protect plants so that we will continue to have food on
our table. We should discourage the burning of grasses, cutting trees, and illegal
logging. If the leaves of plants are destroyed, they cannot perform photosynthesis and
animals will also perish.
Rule 2: Inform the students on the criteria to be used for grading their essays.
This rule allows the students to focus on relevant and substantive materials rather
than on peripheral and unnecessary facts and bits of information.
Example: Write an essay on the topic: “Plant Photosynthesis” using the keywords
indicated. You will be graded according to the following criteria: (a) coherence, (b)
accuracy of statements, (c) use of keywords, (d) clarity and (e) extra points for innovative
presentation of ideas.
This is another attempt is control personal bias during scoring. Answers to essay
questions should be evaluated in terms of what is written, not it terms of what is known
about the writers from other contacts with them. The best way to prevent our prior
knowledge from influencing our judgment is to evaluate each answer without knowing
the identity of the writer. This can be done by having the students write their names on
the back of the paper or by using code numbers in place of names.
Rule 7: Whenever possible, have two or more persons grade each answer. The best
way to check on the reliability of the scoring of essay answers is to obtain two or
more independent judgments.
Although this may not be a feasible practice for routine classroom testing, it might be
done periodically with a fellow teacher (one who is equally competent in the area).
Obtaining two or more independent ratings becomes especially vital where the results are
to be used for important and irreversible decisions, such as in the selection of students for
further training or for special awards. Here the pooled ratings of several competent
persons may be needed to attain level of reliability that is commensurate with the
significance of the decision being made.
Some teachers use the cumulative criteria i.e. adding the weights given to each criterion,
as basis for grading while others use the reverse. In the latter method, each student begins
with a score of 100. Points are then deducted every time a teacher encounters a mistake
or when a criterion is missed by the student in his essay.
Note: In every test write instructions that are clear, explicit, and
unambiguous
Item difficulty: A measure of whether an item was too easy or too hard.
Improve questions for future test administrations or to adjust credit on current attempts
Discuss test results with your class
Provide a basis for remedial work
Improve classroom instruction
Discrimination index reflects the degree to which an item and the test as a whole are
measuring a unitary ability or attribute, values of the coefficient will tend to be lower for tests
measuring a wide range of content areas than for more homogeneous tests.
Item Discrimination I
The single best measure of the effectiveness of an item is its ability to separate students
who vary in their degree of knowledge of the material tested and their ability to use it. If
one group of students has mastered the material and the other group had not, a larger
portion of the former group should be expected to correctly answer a test item. Item
discrimination is the difference between the percentage correct for these two groups.
Item discrimination can be calculated by ranking the students according to total score and
then selecting the top 27 percent and the lowest 27 percent in terms of total score. For each
item, the percentage of students in the upper and lower groups answering correctly is
calculated. The difference is one measure of
Item Discrimination II
The point biserial correlation (PBC) measures the correlation between the correct answer
(viewed as 1 = right and 0 = wrong) on an item and the total test score of all students. The
PBC is sometimes preferred because it identifies items that correctly discriminate between
high and low groups, as defined by the test as a whole instead of the upper and lower 27
percent of a group.
Inspection of the attached report shows that the PBC can generate a substantially different
measurement of item discrimination than the simple item discrimination difference
described above. Often, however, the measures are in close agreement.
Generally, the higher the PBC the better the item discrimination, and thus, the effectiveness
of the item. The following criteria may be used to evaluate test items.
PBC Interpretation
“Item difficulty” is the percentage of the total group that got the item correct.
The item difficulty index ranges from 0 to 100; the higher the value, the easier the question.
When an alternative is worth other than a single point, or when there is more than one correct
alternative per question, the item difficulty is the average score on that item divided by the
highest number of points for any one alternative.
Item difficulty is relevant for determining whether students have learned the concept being
tested. It also plays an important role in the ability of an item to discriminate between students
who know the tested material and those who do not. The item will have low discrimination if it is
so difficult that almost everyone gets it wrong or guesses, or so easy that almost everyone gets
it right.
Item difficulty is important because it reveals whether an item is too easy or too hard. In
either case, the item may add to the unreliability of the test because it does not aid in
differentiating between those students who know the material and those who do not. For
example, an item answered correctly by everyone does nothing to aid in the assignment of
grades. The same is true for items that no one answers correctly.
The optimal item difficulty depends on the question-type and on the number of possible
distractors. Many test experts believe that for a maximum discrimination between high and
low achievers, the optimal levels (adjusting for guessing) are:
Items with difficulties less than 30 percent or more than 90 perecent definitely need
attention. Such items should either be revised or replaced. An exception might be at the
beginning of a test where easier items (90 percent or higher) may be desirable.
One of the best estimates of reliability of test scores from a single administration of a test is
provided by the Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR20) or KR-21. On the “Standard Item
Analysis Report” attached, it is found in the top center area. For example, in this report the
reliability coefficient is .87. For good classroom tests, the reliability coefficients should
be .70 or higher.
To increase the likelihood of obtaining higher reliability, a teacher can:
2. include questions that measure higher, more complex levels of learning, and include
questions with a range of difficulty with most questions in the middle range; and
3. if one or more essay questions are included on the test, grade them as objectively as
possible.
Types of Reliability
Example: Inter-rater reliability might be employed when different judges are evaluating the
degree to which art portfolios meet certain standards. Inter-rater reliability is especially
useful when judgments can be considered relatively subjective. Thus, the use of this type
of reliability would probably be more likely when evaluating artwork as opposed to math
problems.
1. Face Validity ascertains that the measure appears to be assessing the intended
construct under study. The stakeholders can easily assess face validity. Although this is not
a very “scientific” type of validity, it may be an essential component in enlisting motivation
of stakeholders. If the stakeholders do not believe the measure is an accurate assessment
of the ability, they may become disengaged with the task.
Example: If a measure of art appreciation is created all of the items should be related to the
different components and types of art. If the questions are regarding historical time
periods, with no reference to any artistic movement, stakeholders may not be motivated to
give their best effort or invest in this measure because they do not believe it is a true
assessment of art appreciation.
2. Construct Validity is used to ensure that the measure is actually measure what it is
intended to measure (i.e. the construct), and not other variables. Using a panel of “experts”
familiar with the construct is a way in which this type of validity can be assessed. The
experts can examine the items and decide what that specific item is intended to measure.
Students can be involved in this process to obtain their feedback.
To further describe a set of data, a single summarizing value maybe computed, known as
Measure of Central Tendency. Though tabularand graphical summaries convey general impressions
on the data, measures of central tendency or location give information about a single value in which
the data set of observations tends to cluster to. Some of the popular and commonly used measures of
central tendency are the mean, median, and the mode.
1.1 MEAN
Arithmetic mean
- Is the average value of the data set; it is denoted by μ, defined as the sum of all the
obsercations divided by the total number of observations. In symbols, if we let X=the
value of the i thobservation and N= number of observation, then the mean is given by:
N
∑ Xi
μ= i=1 i=1 , 2 , … . N
N
1. Find the average of the scores: 80, 82, 76, 78, 82, and
91.
Solution:
N
∑ Xi 80+82+76+78+ 82+91
μ= i=1 = =81.5
N 6
Weighted mean
- The value is obtained by summing up the product of each score by its corresponding
weight, divided by the sum of the weights. In formula,
2. Angel has the following grades and the equivalent credit units foe each grade. Determine her GWA
(General Weighted Average)
Subject Units (wi) Grade (xi) wi(xi)
Filipino 2 3 87 261
English 3 84 252
Math 1 3 85 255
P.E 1 95 95
Chem 1 (Lec) 3 82 246
Chem 1 (Lab) 1 82 82
Philo 1 3 85 255
17 1446
Solution:
1446
X w= =85.06
17
Thus, the weighted mean is 85.06
Grand Mean
- This value is obtained by summing up the mean of each group multiplied by the number
of scores in the group, divided by the sum of the number of scores in each group.
n
4. A researcher conducted a survey involving three groups of respondents. The mean of the first group
with 24 respondents was 4.32.
The Median
The median, denoted by Md, is a single value which divides an array of observations into two equal
parts such that half of the observations fall below
it and the other half fall above it. It is the middlemost value in the array.
The two centermost scores are 7 and 8. So, we find the mean of these two scores.
7+8
=7.5 Thus, 7.5 is the median of the given scores.
2
The Mode
The mode, denoted by Mo, is the value which occurs most frequently in the given data set.
A score distribution has a normal distribution when most of the values are aggregated
around the mean and the number of values decrease as you move below or above the
mean: the bar graph of frequencies of a normally distributed sample will look like a bell
curve. The mean, median and mode are equal.
A normal curve.
Skewed Distribution:
If one tail is longer than another, the distribution is skewed. These distributions are
sometimes called asymmetric or asymmetrical distributions as they don’t show any kind of
symmetry. Symmetry means that one half of the distribution is a mirror image of the other
half. For example, the normal distribution is a symmetric distribution with no skew. The tails
are exactly the same.
A left-skewed distribution has a long left tail. Left-skewed distributions are also
called negatively-skewed distributions. That’s because there is a long tail in the negative
direction on the number line. The mean is also to the left of the peak.
A right-skewed distribution has a long right tail. Right-skewed distributions are also
called positive-skew distributions. That’s because there is a long tail in the positive direction
on the number line. The mean is also to the right of the peak. The scores tend to
congregate at the lower end of the score distribution.
https://www.statisticshowto.com/probability-and-statistics/skewed-distribution
NORMAL DISTRIBUTIONS AND THE EMPIRICAL RULE
One of the most important statistical distributions of data is known as normal distribution. This distribution
A Normal distribution forms a bell-shaped curve that is symmetric about a vertical line through the mean
In the normal distribution shown at the left ,the area of the shaded region is 0.159
units .This region represents the fact that 15.9% of the
data values are greater than or equal to 10 Because the
area under the curve is 1 ,the unshaded region under the curve has area 1-0.159, or 0.841,
representing the fact that 84.1% of the data are less than 10.
The following rule, called the empirical Rule, describe the percents of data that lie within
1,2 and3 standard deviation of the mean in a normal distribution.
Question: what is the area under the curve to the right of the mean for a normal distribution?
ANSWER: Because normal distribution is symmetric about the mean, the area under the curve
to the right to the mean is one-half the total area. The total area under a nomal distribution is
1, so the area under the curve to the right of the mean is 0.5
The Standard Normal Distribution
It is often helpful to convert data values x to z-Scores, as we did in the previous section by
using the z-score formulas:
x−μ
z= for population
σ
x−x
¿z = for sample
s
If the original distribution of z values is a normal distribution, then the corresponding
distribution of z-scores will also be a normal distribution. This normal distribution of z-scores is
called the standard normal distribution. See Figure below. It has a mean of 0 and a standard
deviation of 1.
Solve an Application
6. A soda machine dispenses soda into 12-ounce cups. Tests show that the actual amount of soda
dispensed is normally distributed, with a mean of 11.5 oz and a standard deviation of 0.2 oz
a .Recall that the formula for the z-score for a data value x is
x−x
zx =
s
The z-score for 11.25 oz is
= = -1.25
11.25−11.5
z 11.25
0.2
Table for areas of a normal curve indicates that 0.394 (39.4%) of a data in a normal distribution
are between z= 0 and z = 1.25.
Because the data are normally distributed, 39.4% of the data is also between z = 0 and z = 1.25.
The percent of data to the left of z = -1.25 is 50% - 39.4% = 10.6%.
Thus 10.6% of the cups filled by the soda machine will receive less than 11.25 oz of soda.
c. A cup will overflow if it receives more than 12 oz of soda. The z-score for 12 oz is
z 12−11.5
12= =2.5
0.2
Table 6.2 indicates that 0.494 (49.4%) of the data in the standard normal distribution are between
z=0 and z=2.5.
The percent of data to the right of z=2.5 is determined by subtracting 49.4% from 50%. See
Figure 4.13.
Thus 0.6% of the time the machine produces an overflow, and the probability that a cup filled at
random will overflow is 0.006.
Note: Table for areas of a normal curve is found in any statistics book
The measure of central tendency tells us only the typical or the average value of a set of
measurements in the given data set but fails to describe how spread these measurements are
about their average values.
For instance, given the three sets of data, the mean, the median, and the mode are :
The Measures of Variability or Dispersion is a value that measures the spread or variability
of the observations of the observations in the data set. Some measures of variability are the
range, the variance, and the standard deviation
RANGE- the range is the difference between the highest value and the lowest value in the
ungrouped data set. In the grouped data set, the range is the difference between the
upper limit of the highest class interval and the lower limit of the lowest class interval. In
symbol,
Ungrouped data: R= HV – HL
VARIANCE- the variance, denoted by σ 2 is the mean of the squared deviation of the
observations from their arithmetic mean. In symbol, the variance is given by
∑ f ( X−μ )2
σ 2= i =1 k for grouped data
∑f
i=1
STANDARD DEVIATION- the standard deviation, denoted by σ is the positive root of the
variance. In symbol,
√
N
√
N
∑ f (X−¿ μ)2
σ =√ σ 2= i=1
k
¿ for grouped data
∑f
i =1
Standard Deviation:
σ =√ σ 2=¿ √11.19=¿ 3.3451 ≈ 3.35
1. for Ungrouped Data:
Consider the weights of 4 female college students (in Kgs): 49, 57, 49, 50.
mean μ=51.25
Variance =
∑ ( X−μ )2
σ 2= i =1 for Ungrouped Data
N
Below 55 Fail 1%
Above 85 Excellent 1%
In the Philippines, there are two types of grading systems used, the averaging and
cumulative grading systems.
In averaging system, the grade of a student on a particular grading period Is the
average of grades obtained in the prior grading periods and the current grading period
In cumulative grading system, the grade of a student in a grading period equals his
current grading period grade which is assumed to have the cumulative effects of the
previous grading periods