data - values of qualitative or quantitative variables, belonging to a set of items
set of items - sometimes called the population; the set of objects you are interested in
variables - a measurement or characteristic of an item
Types of Measurements
qualitative - country of origin, sex, treatment
quantitative - height, weight, blood pressure
Raw Data
- the original source of the data
- often hard to use for data analyses
- data analysis includes processing
- raw data may only need to be processed once
Processed Data
- data that is ready for analysis
- processing can include merging, subsetting, transforming, etc.
- there may be standards for processing
- all steps should be recorded
The goal is to take raw data and turn it into processed data.