Fundamentals of Statistics

Unit 1 – Accessible Statistics – MAIN POST

Pamela Gray

American InterContinental University

Introduction

The discussion below will focus on different types of data collection with its pros and cons for articles found within the University’s Library.

Body (4 paragraphs)

In this analysis, we will discuss the article titled Improving Cardio Care in the Outpatient Setting. This article uses observation as its method of data collection. This article is focused on data collection for improvements to its cardio care (May, 2011). The practice used several different sites in order to collect the data needed. As a result, this method of collection provided good analysis for their cardio needs.

We will now discuss the pros and cons of observational study. First, an observational study is a random study of people or groups within an assigned control group (Hawkes, 1993). The pros of using observational data are that there is no sampling or specific purpose for the data collection. Its data can be used for any purpose and that’s makes for good analysis for any observer. The cons to the data collection are that the person or persons doing the observing must be well trained in doing this job. Also, doing observational data takes a long time which makes it very time consuming. As a result, observational data has many good points than bad points.

In this next study, its data is focused on quantitative data used in an article called the Developing and Implementing an Operational Loss Data Collection Program. Quantitative data is data that uses numbers that can be measured or on a ratio scale (Hawkes, 1993). The article focused on loss of data and how it is a weakness (Garrity, 2007). Some of the data points were money loss and number of participants used. With that said, quantitative data is very useful for collecting data.

As stated above, quantitative data is data used to measure using numbers (Hawkes, 1993). The pros of using quantitative data are that...