COMPONENTS OF STATISTICS

1. Descriptive statistics
2. Inferential statistics
3. Statistical modelling
 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
 Descriptive Statistics refers to methods of organizing,
summarizing and presenting raw data so that it shows a
picture of its distribution to enable it to be described. It can
be in:
 Graphical form such as tally tables, bar graphs, stem and leaf
diagram, box and whisker plot, histograms, scatter plots or
pictograms.
 Numerical form such as measures of central tendency (mean,
mode, median) or measures of scatter, dispersion or variability
(variance, standard deviation).
 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
 These statistics are used for observation decision making.
 They condense large volumes of data into a few summary
measures.
 Descriptive statistics are also called explanatory data
analysis.
 Descriptive statistics is the term given to the analysis of data
that helps describe, show or summarize data in a meaningful
way.
 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.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

 Descriptive statistics are very important because if we simply

present raw data it would be hard to visualize what the data
is showing, especially if there is 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.
 Data can be summarized and represented in an accurate way
using charts, tables and graphs
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
Score Frequency
0 - 20 10
21 - 40 15
41 - 60 35
61 - 80 20
81 -100 20
Total 100
For example: We have marks of
100 students and we may be
interested in the overall
performance of those students
and the distribution as well as
the spread of marks.
Descriptive statistics provides us
the tools to define our data in a
most understandable and
appropriate way.
 INFERENTIAL STATISTICS
 Inferential means an assumption that is rationally and
logically made, based on the given facts or circumstances.
 An inference is based on facts, therefore, the reasoning for
the conclusion is often logical.
 It is about using data from sample and then making
inferences about the larger population from which the sample
is drawn.
 The goal of the inferential statistics is to draw conclusions
from a sample and generalize them to the population.
 It determines the probability of the characteristics of the
sample using probability theory.
 INFERENTIAL STATISTICS
 The most common methodologies used are hypothesis tests,
analysis of variance etc.
 For example: Suppose we are interested in the exam marks of
all university students in Zimbabwe. But it is not feasible to
measure the exam marks of all the students.
 We will measure the marks of a smaller sample of students, for
example 1000 students. This sample will now represent the large
population of Zimbabwean university students.
 We would consider this sample for our statistical study for
studying the population from which it’s deduced.
 INFERENTIAL STATISTICS
 Descriptive statistical findings are usually based on the
analysis of sample data only, where as inferential statistics
generalize sample findings to the broader population.
 Social workers are seldom interested in sample findings
alone, they are more interested in the bigger picture, which
refers to the behaviour and characteristics of a random
variable in the population from which the sample was
chosen.
 Inferential statistics extends the information extracted from
the sample to the actual population in which problem arises.
 Thus, inferential statistics provide social workers with a
statistical verified basis for decision making.
COMPARISON OF DESCRIPTIVE AND INFERENTIAL
STATISTICS
 STATISTICAL MODELLING
 These are used to build relationships between variables.
 Many variables in society are either known or assumed to
interact with each other.
 Statistical modelling is that area of statistics where
mathematical equations are used to build relationships
between these variables.
 The equations, called models, are then used to predict values
of one or more of the variables under different management
scenarios.
STATISTICAL MODELLING
 In simple terms, statistical modeling is a simplified, mathematically-
formalized way to approximate reality (i.e. what generates your data) and
optionally to make predictions from this approximation.
 Example: Suppose you want to report the weight of a variety of potatoes.
 We will consider a hard and an easy way to do it. The hard way is spending
years measuring the weight of every single potato of this variety in the world,
and reporting your data in an endless Excel spreadsheet.
 The easy way is selecting a 30 potato-wide representative sample of this
variety, computing its average and standard deviation and reporting only
those two numbers as an approximate description of this weight.
 Representing a quantity by an average and a standard deviation is a very
simple form of statistical modeling.