Statistical Sciences 2141A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Qualitative Property, Inductive Reasoning, Point Estimation

• School: Western University
• Department: Statistical Sciences
• Course: Statistical Sciences 2141A/B
• Professor: Joe Raaymakers

Document Summary

A population consists of all possible observations available of a particular type of data. When desired information is gathered for all objects in the population, it is called a census. "they use this kind of thing for social programs to help the population" A sample is a subset (portion) of a population that an experimenter measures and uses to investigate unknown properties of the population (rather than taking a census) There are 3 branches of probability and statistics: Descriptive statistics: methods to summarize and describe features of data (for a population or sample) Probability: methods for using known properties of a population to draw conclusions about a sample (deductive reasoning) Inferential statistics: method for going beyond a sample to draw conclusions about a population (inductive reasoning) An investigation or experiment will typically focus on a collection of objects constituting a population of interest. Constraints on time, money, and other resources usually make a census impractical or infeasible.