MO

Basic Concepts and

DUL
Categories of Statistics &
Statistical Packages/
Softwares
Learning Objectives

At the end of this module, the participants

should be able to:

discuss statistical concepts;

identify different types of variables and classify data
according to level of measurement ; and
introduce the different statistical packages.
Statistics
_ (Singular sense) is a science which deals with the collection,
organization, presentation, analysis, and interpretation of data
_ a study of variation
_ (plural sense) is an actual number derived from the data
_ a collection of facts and figures
_ a processed data (e.g. Population statistics, statistics on births,
statistics on enrolment)

Statistics is a study of data: describing properties of the data, which is called

descriptive statistics, and drawing conclusions about a population of interest from information
extracted from a sample, which is called inferential statistics.

The Variables and Levels of Measurement

The measurement of a variable determines the amount of information that can be
processed to answer research objectives of a study. The scale of
measurement of the variable determines the algebraic operations that can be
performed and the statistical tools that can be applied to analyze the data. These are four scales
or levels of measurement: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, Ratio.

Statistical Packages
_ CS Pro (Census and Survey Processing System)
_ SAS (Statistical Analysis Software)
_ Stata
_ Minitab
_R
_ STAR (Statistical Tool for Agricultural Research)
_ IRRISTAT
_ CROPSTAT
_ ITSM 2000
_ E-Views
_ SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences)

SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences)

_ one of the most widely used program for statistical analysis in Social
Sciences
_ Advantages:
_ User-friendly interface
_ Wide array of statistical procedures
_ Disadvantages:
_ Expensive
_ License is time limited
_ Graphics are less impressive