Log-in | Contact Jeff | Email Updates
 
Home What is Statistics? A Population and Sample A Parameter and a Statistic Quantitative and Categorical Data Discrete and Continuous Nominal, Ordinal, Interval and Ratio Describing the Center of Data Describing the Variability of Data The Standard Deviation and Coefficient of Variation The Empirical Rule Percentiles and The Five-Number SummaryView All Tutorials
 A Population and Sample
Fundamentals of Statistics 1: Basic Concepts :: What is Statistics?
The statistics most people are familiar with from the news, sports and books are usually about describing data. What does the average American spend on popcorn at the Movie Theater?

Statistics is also using data to predict things that are unknown. We can be 95% confident more people will vote for Candidate A than B.


Statistical analysis is like solving mysteries with data. We start with questions and attempt to answer them with data instead of our intuition. When we assemble enough data we make predictions.



With predictions, there's always a chance that we'll be wrong. Much of statistics is understanding what we know from data we do have, making our best prediction about data we don't have, and clearly understanding the chance that we're wrong and quantifying that.

Summarizing data by describing the average or mean and the minimums and maximum is part of descriptive statistics and is the one we hear a lot on TV and sports--hence the describing of data.

When we want to make predictions or infer things from data we're using inferential statistics. In inferential statistics we usually have just a subset of data, or a sample, taken from a larger group which is referred to as a population.



 
Home What is Statistics? A Population and Sample A Parameter and a Statistic Quantitative and Categorical Data Discrete and Continuous Nominal, Ordinal, Interval and Ratio Describing the Center of Data Describing the Variability of Data The Standard Deviation and Coefficient of Variation The Empirical Rule Percentiles and The Five-Number SummaryView All Tutorials
 A Population and Sample

How well did you understand this lesson?

Avg. Rating 8.28 (501)

Not at all    Neutral    Extremely
012345678910

What didn't make sense?

Name
Email Not Published
Comment
 To prevent comment spam, please answer the following question before submitting (tags not permitted) :
What is 4 + 2: (enter the number)
July 17, 2019 | Muluken wrote:
everything did give sense.
 
July 17, 2019 | Muluken wrote:
Good
 
July 17, 2019 | Muluken wrote:
So far nice.
 
June 27, 2017 | somil wrote:
Very well explained
 
April 25, 2017 | peter mulimba wrote:
very confusing
 
June 22, 2013 | Danladi daniel danboyi wrote:
No comment