Name: Ahmed Raza

Roll no: 13419

Statistics: Statistics defined as the science of collection, organization
presentation, analysis and interpretation of numerical data.

There are two types of statistics. (1) Descriptive statistics (2) Inferential statistics

Descriptive Statistics is the branch of statistics which deals with the concepts and
methods concerned with summarization and description of important aspects of
numerical data.

Inferential statistics is the branch of statistics which deals with procedures for
making inferences about the characteristics that describe the large group of data
or population.

Statistics is important for all branches of science, because it is incredibly helpful in

decision making and testing the accuracy of the decisions at the end.

Role of Statistics in Biology

While the study of biology focuses on living organisms, statistical analyses provide
crucial insight into many biological processes. Basic statistical concepts help
biologists correctly prepare experiments, verify conclusions and properly
interpret results. Many biology courses of study require a course in biostatistics
that covers such concepts as randomized trials, hypothesis testing and the use of
statistical software.

Establishing Sample Size

An important part of any biological experiment involves correctly choosing
samples and selecting the right number of trials. A basic introduction to statistics
provides background in statistical randomness and the law of large numbers.
When conducting a study of whether insects prefer to eat American elm leaves or
Princeton elm leaves, for example, using a properly randomized sample of both
types of leaves helps control for confounding factors. For example, choosing a
small number of leaves from the American elm, if those were all from a single
tree, might result in a tree that was unusually filled with insects and would bias
the results. Selecting many hundreds of leaves from a random sample of trees,
however, reduces this type of error.

 Simple random sample

 Stratified random sample
 Systematic random sample
 Cluster sample

Hypothesis Testing
When conducting experiments with a large sample, a biologist must make sure
that a conclusion is statistically significant. One such experiment might involve
examining whether smoking leads to cancer. By examining the means of two
groups -- one that smokes and one that doesn't -- a biologist might find that the
smokers more commonly had cancer. Means, however, reflect the center of a
distribution of data, and hypothesis testing involves examining the spread of that
distribution. If the data is heavily clustered around the mean, the mean number is
a reliable indicator; if the data is heavily spread out, the mean is less reflective of
overall trends and should be considered in that context.

Interpreting Data Analyses

After finishing an experiment or observation, biologists need statistics to draw
proper conclusions. For example, comparing the data from two groups of plants --
one that was watered and one that was not -- can lead to erroneous conclusions.
A biologist, for example, might simply record the mean height of these two sets of
plants and conclude that the watered plants grew taller. This, however, does not
account for other statistical measures, such as variance. The nonwatered plants
might have grown less tall on average, but perhaps their heights varied more
widely than their watered counterparts, which is important data to relay in a
conclusion.

Statistical Software
Very large data sets cannot easily be processed by hand. In many biological
situations, such as those in ecology that use large sample sizes, using statistical
software makes data processing more expedient. Data programs include Stata;
Statistical Analysis System, or SAS; and Statistical Product and Service Solution, or
SPSS. Most introductory statistics classes will use these software products, which
can involve learning programming languages.

References
University of Delaware: Handbook of Biological Statistics

Colby College: The Importance of Statistics in Biology

National Institutes of Health: U.S. National Library of Medicine:

Teaching Biology Through Statistics -- Applications of Statistical
Methods in Genetics and Zoology Courses

https://education.seattlepi.com/role-statistics-biology-6632.html