Data

Topics

Working with data.  Fundamental distinctions such as cases and variables. Types of data matrices. Levels of measurement. Ways and modes. Normalizing variables. Measuring similarity. Combining variables. Unidimensionality. Means and medians. Scale and pattern.

Readings

• Wikipedia on Levels of Measurement

• Wikipedia on Stevens' Law

Handouts

• levels of measurement

• normalizing and rescaling variables

• kinds of matrices

• combining variables via principal components

Suggested Readings

• Zegers, F. E., & ten Berge, J. M. F. (1985). A family of association coefficients for metric scales. Psychometrika, 50(1), 17-24 [PDF])

• Narens and Luce (1987) Meaningfulness and Invariance. 

Data

• facs.xslx

• meanmedian.xlsx

• country data.xlsx

• elements of scale

• geomean.xlsx

Class notes

• Notes | Data