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Lecture Notes: Chapter 1: Introduction To Statistics

This document provides an overview of introductory statistics. It defines statistics as the science of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and interpreting data to make decisions. There are two main branches of statistics: descriptive statistics, which uses numbers and graphics to summarize a data set, and inferential statistics, which uses a sample to draw conclusions about a larger population. Key concepts introduced include elements, variables, observations, qualitative vs. quantitative data, discrete vs. continuous variables, populations, parameters, samples, and statistics.

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Mike Oxlong
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35 views

Lecture Notes: Chapter 1: Introduction To Statistics

This document provides an overview of introductory statistics. It defines statistics as the science of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and interpreting data to make decisions. There are two main branches of statistics: descriptive statistics, which uses numbers and graphics to summarize a data set, and inferential statistics, which uses a sample to draw conclusions about a larger population. Key concepts introduced include elements, variables, observations, qualitative vs. quantitative data, discrete vs. continuous variables, populations, parameters, samples, and statistics.

Uploaded by

Mike Oxlong
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture Notes Chapter 1: Introduction to Statistics.

The term Statistics originally referred to " affairs of the state" (think "state-
is-tics"), such as the number of people in a kingdom or the amount of tax revenue
collected. A more modern definition of the term statistics would be "data-o-logy"-
so you should think of statistics as the science of data.

What is Statistics? Statistics is the art and science of collecting, organizing,


analyzing, and interpreting data in order to make decisions.

Data consist of information coming from observations, counts, measurements, or


responses.

Data can be numerical, as in height, or they can be nonnumerical, as in gender. In


either case, data describe characteristics of an individual.

Quantitative data consist of numerical measurements or counts.

Qualitative data consist of attributes, labels, or nonnumeric entries.

There are two branches of Statistics: (Descriptive Statistics and Inferential


Statistics)

Descriptive Statistics: (The Building Blocks of Data Analysis)

As a first step in data analysis, we use numbers (such as counts and percents) and
graphics to describe the data set.

Suppose we are collecting data about the patients in a particular hospital,


including the diagnosis, length of stay, gender, and total cost. The sources of the
information (the patients) are called the elements. the patients' characteristic (for
example, diagnosis, length os stay) are called the variables. And the complete set
of characteristics for a particular patient is called an observation.

An element is a specific entity for which information is collected.

A variable is a characteristic of an element, which can assume different values for


different elements.

An observation is the set of values the variables for a given element.

A qualitative or categorical variable is a variable that does not have a numeric


value but is classified into categories.

A quantitative variable is a variable that takes numeric values, and it makes sense
to say, for example, that one value is larger than another.

For example, Alex's qualitative variables include his gender, ethnicity, marital
status, and college. In contrast, Alex's grade point average is an example of a
quantitative variable.

Quantitative variables can be classified as either Discrete or Continuous. A


Discrete variable can take either a finite or a countable number of values. Each
value can be graphed as a separate point on a number line, with space between
each point. A continuous variable can't take infinitely many values, forming an
interval on the number line, with no space between the points.

For example, the variable " the number of children" is discrete and the variable "
GPA" is continuous. Since GPA can take an infinite number of possible values, for
example interval 0.0 to 4.0.

Inferential statistics is the branch of statistics that involves using a sample to


draw conclusions about a population.
A population is the complete collection of all elements (scores, people,
measurement, and so on) to be studied. The collection is complete in the sense that
it includes all subjects to be studied.

A parameter is a characteristic of a population.

A census is the collection of data from every element in a population.

A sample is a sub collection of elements drawn from a population.

A statistic is a characteristic of a sample

Example 1: In a recent survey, 3002 American adults were asked if they read new
on the Internet at least once a week.

Responses of American adults (population)

Responses of adults in survey (sample)

Statistical inference consists of methods for estimating and drawing conclusion


about population characteristics based on the information contained in a subset
(sample) of that population. For example, the Pew Internet and American Life
Project conducted a survey of 886 teenagers and found that 284 of them (32%) said
they had been the targets of cyberbullying. At this point, the sociologist can make
the inference that the proportion of all American teenagers who have been
subjected to cyberbullying is 32%, because this is the proportion in the sample. In
doing this, the sociologist is performing statistical inference.

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