Mathematics in psychology.

Understanding mathematics behind psychology is vital for several reasons:

It enable you to read and interpret and research articles, interpreting tables, graphs and statistical
analysis for assignment and research.
It is to conduct research in designing quantitative studies, analyzing or interpreting data, and reporting
the results to further advancing your theory and practice in psychology
Statistical knowledge is also contributes to the development of one’s analytical and critical thinking skills.
It is beyond of mathematical formula to understand relationships between variables for the study of the
complex human behavior.
When learning the math behind the thought, one must:
Learn statistical relationships and several but relevant math formulas.
Hypothesize the results that is presented by computers and sometimes using the software for analysis.
The most commonly used software to do statistical analysis for psychology is SPSS.
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This part introduces some of the relevant concepts that will covered in the subject.
Population and sampling method

Psychologists studied a sample of population in making claims of the population as a whole. One
example is the researcher would interested to know what type of university students who are likely
experience some type of stress before their exams (male or female, young or old). A group of students
would be investigated because it would be impossible to interview every student. The entire group of
people (university students) is the population. The group of students who investigated them is the
sample.
Branch of statistics: descriptive and inferential
Descriptive- organize, summarize, simplify, describe/present data
Descriptive statistics are used to summarize or describe data.
One example is if one achieve is 20 out of 40, and the average score on the test is 28/40, you know this is
worse than average. But the word average here doesn’t mean one did much worst than their classmates.
The information is given variability in the data, for instance, 95% of the students performed between 24
and 30 in of 40, a score of 20 is not far from the range of score from the other students.
Inferential- generalize samples from population, hypothesis test, making predictions
Inferential statistics- drawing conclusions and make inferences, to access the reliability, to draw
conclusions and generalizations of a population.
One example is the difference between groups of university students such as male and females involving
stress before an exam.
Level of measurements
Researchers can collect different types of data, and they are measured in different levels. That means
there are different types of scales of measurements which influence analysis to research.
Examples are:

The first and second are similar, because the data to collected in non numerical, the researcher collect
this in groups (male and female) and levels of education. But the main difference is that in the second,
participants can be ranked in their educational level.
The third collection is that it collects numerical data about the anxiety level, using a scale.
Graphs can also represent test results

Histogram/ bar graph

Frequency is shown at the vertical axis. The value of the variables are represented on the
horizontal axis. The height of each bar coming up from the horizontal axis is the frequency of
occurrence of that value. There is an extra score one number below the bottom score in the
range and one number above the top score in the range.

Frequency polygon
It is another form of representation of frequency but the bar for each score is replaced with a
point directly above each score on the horizontal axis. Then the points for each score are
connected in sequence by straight lines. The line starts on the point 1 number below the lowest
score and finishes one number above the highest score. These types of graphs can be overlaid
to make comparisons between groups of test scores.

Normal distribution curve

This is an expression of typical behavior distribution, called normal probability and is
symmetrical with a cluster about the mean. The normal distribution curve represents a
smoothed normal histogram and the area between the curve and the horizontal axis represents
all of the measurements in any distribution.