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LECTURE 1 AIM
The aim of this course is to equip the
SMA 2103 learners with knowledge in
PROBABILTY fundamentals of probability, random
processes, statistics and decision
AND analysis.

STATISTICS

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INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
Statistics is the science of collecting, organizing, Descriptive statistics deals with methods of
presenting, analyzing, and interpreting data to organizing, summarizing, and presenting data in an
assist in making more effective decisions. The informative way.
study of statistics is usually divided into two broad
areas namely; Inferential statistics deals with methods used to
find out something about a population, based on
a) Descriptive statistics results from a sample.
b) Inferential statistics.

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INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
Population: Sample:
The word population refers to a collection of all- A sample is a portion, or part of the population of
possible individuals, objects, or measurements of interest. More generally a sample is a subset of
interest. The population is also called the universe. measurements selected from the population.
To infer something about a population, we usually Taking a sample to learn something about the
take a sample from the population. population is done extensively in business,
agriculture, politics and government.

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INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
TYPES OF VARIABLES When the data being studied are qualitative, we
are usually interested in how many or what
The two basic types of data are, proportion fall in each category. For example
a) Those obtained from a qualitative
population and ➢ what proportion of the population has
b) Those obtained from a quantitative blue eyes?
population ➢ How many Christians and how many
When the characteristic or variable being studied Muslims are there in Kenya?
is non-numeric, it is called a qualitative variable or
an attribute. Examples of qualitative variables are
gender, religious affiliation, type of automobile
owned, eye colour, etc
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INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
A qualitative (or categorical) variable simply When the variable studied can be reported
records a quality. If a number is used for numerically, the variable is called a quantitative
distinguishing members of different categories of a variable. Examples of quantitative variables are
qualitative variable, the number assignment is
arbitrary. a) the balance in your bank account,
b) the ages of university students,
c) the life of a car battery,
d) the number of children in a family etc.

A quantitative variable can be described by a

number for which arithmetic operations such
as averaging make sense.
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SCALES OF MEASUREMENT
SCALES OF MEASUREMENT
The field of statistics deals with measurements Nominal Scale
some quantitative and others qualitative. The In the nominal scale of measurement, numbers are
measurements are the actual numerical values of a used simply as labels for groups or classes. If our
variable. The four generally used scales of data set consists of red, orange, yellow green and
measurements are; blue items, we may designate red as 1, orange as 2,
yellow as 3 green as 4 and blue as 5. In this case the
numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 stand only for the category
for which a data point belongs. “Nominal” stands for
“name” of category. The nominal scale of
measurement is used for qualitative rather than
quantitative data: red, orange, yellow, green, blue;
male, female; professional classification; geographic
11 classification, and so on. 12

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SCALES OF MEASUREMENT SCALES OF MEASUREMENT

Ordinal Scale Interval Scale
In the ordinal scale of measurement, data elements In the interval scale of measurement, we can
may be ordered according to their relative size or assign meaning to distances between any two
quality. For example five products may be ranked observations. The data are in the interval of
by a consumer as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, where 5 is the numbers, and distances between elements can be
best and 1 is the worst. In this scale, we do not measured in units. For example in 2022, the mean
know how much better one product is than KCSE score for MWALIMU Secondary School was
others, we only know that it is better. 8.345. In 2023 it was 8.764. These numbers are in
an interval scale.

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SCALES OF MEASUREMENT SOURCES OF STATISTICAL DATA

Ratio Scale:
The ratio scale is the strongest scale of measurement. Secondary data
Here not only do the distances between pairs of This is data that is obtained from existing records.
observations have a meaning, but also there is a meaning In most business firms, accounting records are
to ratios of distances. Salaries are measured on a ratio maintained and data on employees’ wages for
scale; a salary of ksh. 85,000 is twice as large as a salary example may be obtained from such records.
of ksh. 42,500. Such a comparison is not possible with
temperatures; which are on an interval scale but not a Examples
ratio scale (we cannot say that 30oc is twice as warm as Teachers may obtain data on academic
15oc). The ratio scale contains a meaningful zero (0oc is performance of their students from examination
not meaningful in this respect). The distinction between records maintained by the headmasters’ office.
the interval and the ratio scales however is not always
immediately clear.
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SOURCES OF STATISTICAL DATA SOURCES OF STATISTICAL DATA

Crime data may be obtained from records Primary Data
maintained in police departments. Import and This is data collected for the first time by the
export data may b e obtained from trade investigator.
department of the ministry of commerce. Published data are not always available on every
subject of interest. When data is not available in
Health data may be obtained from the ministry of records or published materials, it may be obtained
health and so on. by use of questionnaires. A questionnaire is a list
of questions, which are usually printed in a form to
be answered by the individuals from whom
information is being sought.

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ORGANIZING DATA ORGANIZING DATA

When data are first collected, they are likely to be Example 1.5.1
unorganized, somewhat overwhelming and quite A biologist who is interested in knowing whether
unsuitable for interpretation. At this stage, they are or not a given consignment of seeds is worth
called raw data. If the mind is to grasp the planting conducts an experiment as follows;
significance of the data, they must be processed in
various ways. He takes 100 seeds from the consignment and
keeps them under carefully standardized
The primary stage of processing the data is conditions favourable for germination. After 14
organizing them. We may for example list numerical days, he counts the seeds that have germinated
data according to ascending order. This method is and records their number. He repeats this
not good enough especially if there are many values experiment 100 times and obtains the following
to be listed. Another method of organizing data is data:-
the construction of a tally table 19 20

ORGANIZING DATA ORGANIZING DATA

Solution ??????

Construct a tally table for this data.

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ORGANIZING DATA ORGANIZING DATA

Solutions
Scan through the data and get the smallest and the
largest values that is 84 and 95 in this case. List
values in a column starting with the smallest value
writing all possible values, up to the largest value.
Starting with the first row of the data and moving
from left to right, mark / against a number in your
list as it occurs until you exhaust all the numbers in
the first row. Repeat this with all the other rows
until the data are exhausted. Use //// to denote
the fact that a value has occurred four times in the
data so far considered. The tally table is as shown
below; 23 24

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ORGANIZING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

Exercise 1 Having collected data, one obvious method of
The data below shows marks out of 30 for 50 displaying data is in table form. As an example we
students in a statistics continuous assessment test. would display the biologist’s data given in tally table
Construct a tally table for this data 1 as below

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DISPLAYING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

However data is usually much easier to understand Bar – Graph
if displayed graphically. A graphical representation Bar graphs are the most common type of diagrams
does in fact; indicate more clearly any trends or used in practice. A bar is a thick line whose width
patterns in the data. Many types of graphs or is shown merely for attention. The bar graph
charts are used in Statistics, depending on the makes comparison by means of parallel bars of
nature of the data and the purpose for which the equal width placed either horizontally or vertically.
graph is intended. Among these are bar graphs, pie- The vertical bars are preferred because they give a
graphs and line graphs. better look and facilitate comparison. The gap
between one bar and another should be uniform
throughout. In bar graphs, it is the length of the bar
that matters and not the width.

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DISPLAYING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

Example 2 Solutions
The table below shows the number of tourists in
thousands who visited Mombasa in various years.
Present this information by means of a bar chart.

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DISPLAYING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

Multiple Bar Graph (Chart)
The bar corresponding to each year has height This type of bar chart is used when comparisons
proportional to the number of tourists who visited are to be made between more than one
Mombasa in that year. The bars are separated by characteristic. Bars representing the different
spaces of equal width. characteristics are placed side by side.

Example 3
The Table given below shows the number of
television licenses renewed in each of the years and
the average weekly admissions to the cinema in a
certain town. Draw a component bar chart to
represent this information.
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DISPLAYING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

Solutions

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DISPLAYING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

Composite Bar Chart
This type of bar chart is used when we want to
compare the same characteristics from different
sources. In this case a bar chart for the total is
drawn and then broken down into components.

Example 4
The table given below shows foreign exchange
earnings in millions of U.S. dollars from the export Present this information in a composite bar chart.
of various agricultural commodities by a certain
country in various years.

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Solution DISPLAYING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

The composite bar chart for this data is as shown Line Graph
below A line graph is used to emphasize changes in some
characteristic occurring during an interval of time.

Example 4
The table given below gives the population of
Disneyland (in millions) for various years. Graph
this data using a line graph.

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DISPLAYING DATA DISPLAYING DATA

Solution
To construct a line graph, you first draw the
horizontal axis for the years and the vertical axis
for the population with appropriate scales. You
then locate points as usual by co-ordinates read
from the table, for example (1950, 87). Then
Line Graph connect successive points by straight lines since no
A line graph is used to emphasize changes in some information is given as to the population during
characteristic occurring during an interval of time. intermediate years. For this reason, this graph is
known as a line graph. A line graph for the data is
as shown below
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DISPLAYING DATA
Solution
Note that in the line graph, the zero has been
indicated on the vertical axis but (for obvious
reasons) not on the horizontal axis. In general, the
zero should be indicated whenever possible
especially on the vertical axis. If it is impossible for
some reason to indicate the zero and if such
omission might lead to the reader drawing
erroneous conclusions, then it is wise to call
attention to the omission by some means.

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END OF LECTURE 1

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