DEFINITION

Branch of mathematics
dealing with gathering,
analyzing, and making
inferences from data.
Originally associated with
government data (e.g.,
census data), the subject
now has applications in all
the sciences.

ORIGIN
As its name implies, statistics has its roots
in the idea of "the state of things". The
word itself comes from the ancient Latin
term statisticum collegium, meaning "a
lecture on the state of affairs". Eventually,
this evolved into the Italian word statista,
meaning "statesman", and the German
word Statistik, meaning "collection of data
involving the State". Gradually, the term
came to be used to describe the collection
of any sort of data.
DESCRIPTIVE
STATISTICS
Descriptive statistics is the term given to
the analysis of data that helps describe,
show or summarize data in a meaningful
way such that, for example, patterns might
emerge from the data. Descriptive
statistics do not, however, allow us to
make conclusions beyond the data we
have analysed or reach conclusions
regarding any hypotheses we might have
made. They are simply a way to describe
our data.
DESCRIPTIVE
STATISTICS
Descriptive statistics is very important
because if we simply presented our
raw data it would be hard to visualize
what the data was showing,
especially if there was a lot of it.
Descriptive statistics therefore
enables us to present the data in a
more meaningful way, which allows
simpler interpretation of the data.
DESCRIPTIVE
STATISTICS
Typically, there are two general
types of statistic that are used to
describe data:
Measures of Central Tendencies
Measures of Variability

INFERENTIAL
STATISTICS
Inferential statistics are techniques that allow us
to use these samples to make generalizations
about the populations from which the samples
were drawn. It is, therefore, important that the
sample accurately represents the population.
The process of achieving this is called sampling.
Inferential statistics arise out of the fact that
sampling naturally incurs sampling error and
thus a sample is not expected to perfectly
represent the population. The methods of
inferential statistics are (1) the estimation of
parameter(s) and (2) testing of statistical
hypotheses.
POPULATION &
SAMPLE
A population is a large set of objects
of a similar nature - e.g. human
beings, households, readings from a
measurement device - which is of
interest as a whole. A related concept
is a sample , a subset of objects is
drawn from a population.
DATA
facts, observations, and information
that come from investigations.
TYPES OF DATA
Qualitative data
Qualitative data is a categorical
measurement expressed not in terms
of numbers, but rather by means of a
natural language description. In
statistics, it is often used
interchangeably with "categorical"
data.

TYPES OF DATA
Qualitative data
Although we may have categories,
the categories may have a structure
to them. When there is not a natural
ordering of the categories, we call
these nominal categories. Examples
might be gender, race, religion, or
sport.
TYPES OF DATA
Qualitative data
When the categories may be ordered,
these are
called ordinal variables. Categorical
variables that judge size (small, medium,
large, etc.) are ordinal variables. Attitudes
(strongly disagree, disagree, neutral,
agree, strongly agree) are also ordinal
variables, however we may not know
which value is the best or worst of these
issues. Note that the distance between
these categories is not something we can
measure.
TYPES OF DATA
Quantitative data
Quantitative data is a numerical
measurement expressed not by
means of a natural language
description, but rather in terms of
numbers.
Examples are temperature, test
scores, weight, height
VARIABLES
A variable is any characteristics,
number, or quantity that can be
measured or counted. A variable may
also be called a data item. Age, sex,
business income and expenses, country of
birth, capital expenditure, class grades,
eye colour and vehicle type are examples
of variables. It is called a variable because
the value may vary between data units in a
population, and may change in value over
time.
TYPES OF
VARIABLES
1. Numeric variables have values
that describe a measurable
quantity as a number, like 'how
many' or 'how much'. Therefore
numeric variables are quantitative
variables.
Numeric variables may be further
described as either continuous or
discrete.

TYPES OF
VARIABLES
A continuous variable is a numeric
variable. Observations can take any
value between a certain set of real
numbers. The value given to an observation
for a continuous variable can include values
as small as the instrument of measurement
allows. Examples of continuous variables
include height, time, age, and temperature.

Note: The data collected for a numeric
variable are quantitative data.
TYPES OF
VARIABLES
A discrete variable is a numeric
variable. Observations can take a value
based on a count from a set of distinct
whole values. A discrete variable cannot
take the value of a fraction between one
value and the next closest
value. Examples of discrete variables
include the number of registered cars,
number of business locations, and number
of children in a family, all of of which
measured as whole units (i.e. 1, 2, 3 cars).

TYPES OF
VARIABLES
2. Categorical variables have values that
describe a 'quality' or 'characteristic' of a
data unit, like 'what type' or 'which
category'. Categorical variables fall into
mutually exclusive (in one category or in
another) and exhaustive (include all possible
options) categories. Therefore, categorical
variables are qualitative variables and tend
to be represented by a non-numeric value.
Categorical variables may be further
described as ordinal or nominal.
TYPES OF
VARIABLES
1. An ordinal variable is a categorical variable.
Observations can take a value that can be
logically ordered or ranked. The categories
associated with ordinal variables can be ranked
higher or lower than another, but do not
necessarily establish a numeric difference
between each category.
Examples of ordinal categorical variables include
academic grades (i.e. A, B, C), clothing size (i.e.
small, medium, large, extra large) and attitudes
(i.e. strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly
disagree).
TYPES OF
VARIABLES
2. A nominal variable is a categorical variable.
Observations can take a value that is not able
to be organised in a logical
sequence. Examples of nominal categorical
variables include sex, business type, eye colour,
religion and brand.



Note: The data collected for a categorical
variable are qualitative data.

TYPES OF
VARIABLES
Independent Variable - a variable that is
manipulated, measured, or selected by the
researcher as an antecedent condition to an
observed behavior. In a hypothesized cause-
and-effect relationship, the independent
variable is the cause and the dependent
variable is the outcome or effect.
Dependent Variable - a variable that is not
under the experimenter's control -- the data. It
is the variable that is observed and measured in
response to the independent variable.