Observation
What is an observation in statistics?
A complete record of the characteristics we observed about one person or thing.
An observation is a complete record in our dataset. We organize observations into rows. You can think of a row as a vessel for an observation.
In our case, a full interview with a specific person is an observation. And every answer we know about this interviewee is only a part of the observation. We can take the term literally, but its statistical meaning is slightly different from our everyday use. Casually, we might call a single detail we learn an observation, like "Spiderman has zero siblings." But in statistics, this is just a data point and not a complete record. An observation should include everything we observed about Spiderman, not just his sibling count.
From our own dataset
One interviewee = one row. Fill a row with values and it becomes an observation.
Where we teach it
Lesson 1.2 of Project 1: Sibling Interviews. Watch lesson 1.2 and read the notes, free with a free account.