STA 2023 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Statistical Inference, Descriptive Statistics
Document Summary
Statistics is the science of conducting studies to collect, organizes, summarize, analyze, and draw conclusions from data. Statistics is the art of distilling meaning from data. Statistics deals with making decisions in the fact of uncertainty. Statistics is used in a variety of areas such as business, education, and government. A variable is a characteristic or attribute that can assume different values. Variables whose values are determined by chance are called random variables. The values that a variable can assume are called data. A collection of data values forms a data set. Each value in the data set is called a data value or a datum. A population consists of all subjects (human or otherwise) that are studied. A parameter is a characteristic or measure obtained by using all the data values from a specific population. A sample is a subset of the population. A statistic is a characteristic or measure obtained by using the data values from a sample.
