Monitoring Glossary

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Term	Definition
Absolute poverty line	Absolute poverty line is set as an absolute level below which consumption is considered to be too low to meet the minimum welfare level acceptable. Direct Calorie Intake Method, Food-Energy Method, and Cost of Basic Needs Method could be obtained to set absolute poverty line.
Categorical Data	A set of data is said to be categorical if the values or observations belonging to it can be sorted according to category. Each value is chosen from a set of non-overlapping categories.
Cluster Sampling	Cluster sampling is a sampling technique where the entire population is divided into groups, or clusters and a random sample of these clusters are selected. Cluster sampling is typically used when the researcher cannot get a complete list of the members of a population they wish to study but can get a complete list of groups or 'clusters' of the population.
Confidence Limits	Confidence limits are the lower and upper boundaries / values of a confidence interval, that is, the values which define the range of a confidence interval.
Estimate	An estimate is an indication of the value of an unknown quantity based on observed data.
Experimental or Randomized Control Designs	The plan of an experiment, including selection of subjects, order of administration of the experimental treatment, the kind of treatment, the procedures by which it is administered, and the recording of the data (with special reference to the particular statistical analyses to be performed.
Extrapolation	Extrapolation is when the value of a variable is estimated at times which have not yet been observed.
Independent Sampling	Independent samples are those samples selected from the same population, or different populations, which have no effect on one another. That is, no correlation exists between the samples.
Interval Scale	An interval scale is a scale of measurement where the distance between any two adjacents units of measurement (or 'intervals') is the same but the zero point is arbitrary.
Median	The median is the value halfway through the ordered data set, below and above which there lies an equal number of data values.
Mode	The mode is the most frequently occurring value in a set of discrete data.
Percentile	Percentiles are values that divide a sample of data into one hundred groups containing (as far as possible) equal numbers of observations.
Population	A population is any entire collection of people, animals, plants or things from which we may collect data. It is the entire group we are interested in, which we wish to describe or draw conclusions about.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)	A method of measuring the relative purchasing power of different countries' currencies over the same types of goods and services. Because goods and services may cost more in one country than in another, PPP allows us to make more accurate comparisons of standards of living across countries. PPP estimates use price comparisons of comparable items but since not all items can be matched exactly across countries and time, the estimates are not always "robust".
Quartiles	Quartiles are values that divide a sample of data into four groups containing (as far as possible) equal numbers of observations.
Random Sampling	Randomization, in which the selection into the treatment and control groups is random within some well-defined set of people. In this case there should be no difference (in expectation) between the two groups besides the fact that the treatment group had access to the program. (There can still be differences due to sampling error; the larger the size of the treatment and control samples the less the error.).
Range	The range of a sample (or a data set) is a measure of the spread or the dispersion of the observations. It is the difference between the largest and the smallest observed value of some quantitative characteristic and is very easy to calculate.
Representative sampling	The population is divided into subpopulations (strata) and random samples are taken of each stratum.
Sample	A sample is generally selected for study because the population is too large to study in its entirety. The sample should be representative of the general population. This is often best achieved by random sampling. Also, before collecting the sample, it is important that the researcher carefully and completely defines the population, including a description of the members to be included.
Sample mean	The sample mean is an estimator available for estimating the population mean . It is a measure of location, commonly called the average.
Standard Deviation	Standard deviation is a measure of the spread or dispersion of a set of data.
Standard error	Standard error is the standard deviation of the values of a given function of the data (parameter), over all possible samples of the same size.
Statistic	A statistic is a quantity that is calculated from a sample of data. It is used to give information about unknown values in the corresponding population. For example, the average of the data in a sample is used to give information about the overall average in the population from which that sample was drawn.
Time Series	A time series is a sequence of observations which are ordered in time (or space). If observations are made on some phenomenon throughout time, it is most sensible to display the data in the order in which they arose, particularly since successive observations will probably be dependent. Time series are best displayed in a scatter plot. The series value X is plotted on the vertical axis and time t on the horizontal axis.
Variance	The (population) variance of a random variable is a non-negative number which gives an idea of how widely spread the values of the random variable are likely to be; the larger the variance, the more scattered the observations on average.

Sources:

• http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/steps/glossary/
• http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/207203/Module3.pdf