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Statistics Basic Terminologies

The document defines basic statistical terminology including statistics, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, population, sample, variable, qualitative variable, quantitative variable, discrete variable, and continuous variable. Descriptive statistics organizes and summarizes data using tables, graphs and measures, while inferential statistics uses samples to make predictions about populations.

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18 views3 pages

Statistics Basic Terminologies

The document defines basic statistical terminology including statistics, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, population, sample, variable, qualitative variable, quantitative variable, discrete variable, and continuous variable. Descriptive statistics organizes and summarizes data using tables, graphs and measures, while inferential statistics uses samples to make predictions about populations.

Uploaded by

shafika
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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STATISTICS BASIC TERMINOLOGIES

INTRODUCTION TO STATISTICS

DEFINITION:
The word “Statistics” has two meanings. In first place the word statistics refers to
numerical facts systematically arranged. We have for instance, statistics of prices,
statistics of crimes, statistics of births etc. In all these examples the word statistics
denotes a set of numerical data in the respective fields. This is the meaning that a lay
man usually uses for word data. In the second place, the word statistics refers to the
field or discipline of study in this sense, statistics is defined as follows; “Statistics is a
group of methods used to collect, analyze, present and interpret data to make
decisions”. OR “It is defined as a discipline that includes procedures and techniques
used to collect, process and analyze numerical data to make inferences and to reach
decision.

TYPES OF STATISTICS:

Applied statistics can be divided into two areas descriptive statistics and inferential
statistics.

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS: It is consists of concepts and methods for organizing,


displaying and describing data by using tables, graphs and summary measures. Data
set in its original form is usually very large. Such a data set is not very helpful in
drawing conclusions or making decisions. It is easier to draw conclusions from
summary tables and diagrams than from original data set. So we reduce data to a
manageable size by constructing tables, graphs and calculate summary measures such
as averages.

INFERENTIAL STATISTICS: It consists of methods that use sample results to


make decision or predictions about a population. In this branch we make inferences
about the characteristics that describe the large group of data or population. In
statistics the collection of all observations relevant to some characteristic of interest is
called Population. The selection of a subset or sub part from this population is called a
sample. A major portion of statistics deals with making decisions, inferences,
predictions and forecasts about populations based on results obtained from samples.

For example, we may make some decisions about the political views of all college and
university students based on the political views of 1000 students selected from a few
colleges and universities or we may want to found the starting salary of a typical college
graduate to do so, we may select 2000 recent college graduates find their starting
salaries and make decision based on this information.

Observation: Any recording of information whether, numerical or non-numerical is


called an observation.

Population: The collection or a set of all possible observations relevant to some


characteristic of interest is called a population. The term relevant to some
characteristic of interest refer to, whether it is a group of people, animals or objects. It
may be finite or infinite and may be real or hypothetical. The number of observations in
the population is defined to be the size of population and denoted by “N”. The height of
residents in a certain city, the number of trees in a forest and the students of colleges
and universities of a certain state or province are examples of a population. Any
numerical value calculated from population is called parameter.

Sample: A subset of a population is called a sample. Generally it consists of some of


the observations but in certain situations it may include the entire population. The
number of observations included in a sample is called the size of a sample and denoted
by “n” the information drawn from a sample data is used to draw conclusions about the
population. Any numerical measure or value that is calculated from sample data is
called statistic.

Variable:

A characteristic that varies with an individual or an object is called a variable. For


example age, height, income, price etc. The given set of all possible values from which
the variable takes on a value is called its domain. If the domain of a variable contains
only one value then it is called a constant e.g π=3.14 e=2.71 Variables may be classified
into quantitative and qualitative variables.

Qualitative Variable: A variable that cannot be expressed numerically but can be


classified into two or more categories is called qualitative variable. For example
Gender, colour, name are qualitative variables.

Quantitative Variable: A variable that can be measured numerically is called a


quantitative variable income, height, sales, price are all quantitative variables as these
all can be expressed numerically.

A quantitative variable may be further classified as discrete and continuous variables.


Discrete Variables: It is a variable that can take only a discrete set of integers or whole
numbers, which is the values, are taken by jumps or breaks. A discrete variable
represents count data. For example, the number of persons in a family, the number of
deaths in an accident or an income of an individual, etc. Continuous Variable: It is a
variable that can assume any numerical value over a certain interval or it can take
integral as well as fractional values such as age, height, weight etc.

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