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Statistics Notes Chapter 1

This document provides an overview of statistics including: 1) A definition of statistics as the study of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and interpreting numerical data. It involves descriptive statistics to summarize data and inferential statistics to draw conclusions from samples. 2) A brief history noting the earliest known statistical works from the 5th century BC and the development of probability theory and least squares method in the 17th-18th centuries. 3) An explanation that statistics analyzes variables, which can be quantitative values or categorical groupings, from cases in a data set to answer research questions.

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568 views7 pages

Statistics Notes Chapter 1

This document provides an overview of statistics including: 1) A definition of statistics as the study of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and interpreting numerical data. It involves descriptive statistics to summarize data and inferential statistics to draw conclusions from samples. 2) A brief history noting the earliest known statistical works from the 5th century BC and the development of probability theory and least squares method in the 17th-18th centuries. 3) An explanation that statistics analyzes variables, which can be quantitative values or categorical groupings, from cases in a data set to answer research questions.

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shizahameed
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Notes on stats

Contents
1. An introduction to Statistics 2. Definition of Statistics 3.history 4. Data and measurement

An Introduction to Statistics
The statistics is the branch of science which deals with numerical formula and provides solid base to address the problems. It is basically a quantitative approach rather than qualitative.

Definition of Statistics:
Statistics is the study of how to collect, organize, analyze, and Interpret numerical information from data. Descriptive statistics Involves methods of organizing, picturing and summarizing Information from data. Inferential statistics involves methods of using information from a sample to draw conclusions about the Population. Keep in Mind: * Statistical inferences are no more accurate than the data they are based on (weakest link). * Statistical results should be interpreted by one who understands the methods used as well as the subject matter.

History
The use of statistical methods dates back at least to the 5th century BC. The earliest writing on statistics was found in a 9th century book entitled: "Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages", written by Al-Kindi. In his book, he gave a detailed description of how to use statistics and frequency analysis to decipher encrypted messages, this was the birth of both statistics and cryptanalysis, according to the Saudi engineer Ibrahim Al-Kadi. The Nuova Cronica, a 14th century history of Florence by the Florentine banker and official Giovanni Villani, includes much statistical information on population, ordinances, commerce and trade, education, and religious facilities and has been described as the first introduction of statistics as a positive element in history. Some scholars pinpoint the origin of statistics to 1663, with the publication of Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt. Early applications of statistical thinking revolved around the needs of states to base policy on demographic and economic data, hence its statetymology. The scope of the discipline of statistics broadened in the early 19th century to include the collection and analysis of data in general. Today, statistics is widely employed in government, business, and natural and social sciences. Its mathematical foundations were laid in the 17th century with the development of the probability theory by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. Probability theory arose from the study of games of chance. The method of least squares was first described by Carl Friedrich Gauss around 1794. The use of modern computers has expedited large-scale statistical computation, and has also made possible new methods that are impractical to perform manually.

Data and Measurement


Statistics is primarily concerned with how to summarize and interpret variables. A variable is any characteristic of an object that can be represented as a number. The values that the variable takes will vary when measurements are made on different objects or at different times. Each time that we record information about an object we observe a case. We might include several different variables in the same case. For example, we might measure the eight, weight, and hair color of a group of people in an experiment. We would have one case for each person, and that case would contain that person's height, weight, and hair color values. All of our cases put together is called our data set. Variables can be broken down into two types: Quantitative variables are those for which the value has numerical meaning. The value refers to a specifc amount of some quantity. You can do mathematical operations on the values of quantitative variables (like taking an average). A good example would be a person's height. Categorical variables are those for which the value indicates deferent groupings. Objects that have the same value on the variable are the same with regard to some characteristic, but you can't say that one group has \more" or \less" of some feature. It doesn't really make sense to do Math on categorical variables. A good example would be a person's gender. Whenever you are doing statistics it is very important to make sure that you have a practical underStanding of the variables you are using. You should make sure that the information you have truly addresses the question that you want to answer. Specifcally, for each variable you want to think about who is being measured, what about them is Being measured, and why the researcher is conducting the experiment. If the variable is quantitative you should additionally make sure that you know what units are being used in the measurements.

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