Statistics Education Research Journal

Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.Dodge, Y. (2006) ''The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms'', Oxford University Press.

When census data cannot be collected, statisticians collect data by developing specific experiment designs and survey samples. Representative sampling assures that inferences and conclusions can reasonably extend from the sample to the population as a whole. An experimental study involves taking measurements of the system under study, manipulating the system, and then taking additional measurements using the same procedure to determine if the manipulation has modified the values of the measurements. In contrast, an observational study does not involve experimental manipulation.

Two main statistical methods are used in data analysis: descriptive statistics, which summarize data from a sample using indexes such as the mean or standard deviation, and inferential statistics, which draw conclusions from data that are subject to random variation (e.g., observational errors, sampling variation). Descriptive statistics are most often concerned with two sets of properties of a ''distribution'' (sample or population): ''central tendency'' (or ''location'') seeks to characterize the distribution's central or typical value, while ''dispersion'' (or ''variability'') characterizes the extent to which members of the distribution depart from its center and each other. Inferences on mathematical statistics are made under the framework of probability theory, which deals with the analysis of random phenomena.

A standard statistical procedure involves the collection of data leading to a test of the relationship between two statistical data sets, or a data set and synthetic data drawn from an idealized model. A hypothesis is proposed for the statistical relationship between the two data sets, and this is compared as an alternative to an idealized null hypothesis of no relationship between two data sets. Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis is done using statistical tests that quantify the sense in which the null can be proven false, given the data that are used in the test. Working from a null hypothesis, two basic forms of error are recognized: Type I errors (null hypothesis is falsely rejected giving a "false positive") and Type II errors (null hypothesis fails to be rejected and an actual relationship between populations is missed giving a "false negative"). Multiple problems have come to be associated with this framework, ranging from obtaining a sufficient sample size to specifying an adequate null hypothesis.

Measurement processes that generate statistical data are also subject to error. Many of these errors are classified as random (noise) or systematic (bias), but other types of errors (e.g., blunder, such as when an analyst reports incorrect units) can also occur. The presence of missing data or censoring may result in biased estimates and specific techniques have been developed to address these problems.

Introduction

Statistics is a mathematical body of science that pertains to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data, or as a branch of mathematics. Some consider statistics to be a distinct mathematical science rather than a branch of mathematics. While many scientific investigations make use of data, statistics is concerned with the use of data in the context of uncertainty and decision making in the face of uncertainty.

In applying statistics to a problem, it is common practice to start with a population or process to be studied. Populations can be diverse topics such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Ideally, statisticians compile data about the entire population (an operation called census). This may be organized by governmental statistical institutes. ''Descriptive statistics'' can be used to summarize the population data. Numerical descriptors include mean and standard deviation for continuous data (like income), while frequency and percentage are more useful in terms of describing categorical data (like education).

When a census is not feasible, a chosen subset of the population called a sample is studied. Once a sample that is representative of the population is determined, data is collected for the sample members in an observational or experimental setting. Again, descriptive statistics can be used to summarize the sample data. However, drawing the sample contains an element of randomness; hence, the numerical descriptors from the sample are also prone to uncertainty. To draw meaningful conclusions about the entire population, ''inferential statistics'' is needed. It uses patterns in the sample data to draw inferences about the population represented while accounting for randomness. These inferences may take the form of answering yes/no questions about the data (hypothesis testing), estimating numerical characteristics of the data (estimation), describing associations within the data (correlation), and modeling relationships within the data (for example, using regression analysis). Inference can extend to forecasting, prediction, and estimation of unobserved values either in or associated with the population being studied. It can include extrapolation and interpolation of time series or spatial data, and data mining.

Mathematical statistics

Mathematical statistics is the application of mathematics to statistics. Mathematical techniques used for this include mathematical analysis, linear algebra, stochastic analysis, differential equations, and measure-theoretic probability theory.

History

Formal discussions on inference date back to Arab mathematicians and cryptographers, during the Islamic Golden Age between the 8th and 13th centuries. Al-Khalil (717–786) wrote the ''Book of Cryptographic Messages'', which contains one of the first uses of permutations and combinations, to list all possible Arabic words with and without vowels. Al-Kindi's ''Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages'' gave a detailed description of how to use frequency analysis to decipher encrypted messages, providing an early example of statistical inference for decoding. Ibn Adlan (1187–1268) later made an important contribution on the use of sample size in frequency analysis.

The earliest writing containing statistics in Europe dates back to 1663, with the publication of ''Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality'' by John Graunt. Early applications of statistical thinking revolved around the needs of states to base policy on demographic and economic data, hence its ''stat-'' etymology. The scope of the discipline of statistics broadened in the early 19th century to include the collection and analysis of data in general. Today, statistics is widely employed in government, business, and natural and social sciences.

The mathematical foundations of statistics developed from discussions concerning games of chance among mathematicians such as Gerolamo Cardano, Blaise Pascal, Pierre de Fermat, and Christiaan Huygens. Although the idea of probability was already examined in ancient and medieval law and philosophy (such as the work of Juan Caramuel), probability theory as a mathematical discipline only took shape at the very end of the 17th century, particularly in Jacob Bernoulli's posthumous work ''Ars Conjectandi''. This was the first book where the realm of games of chance and the realm of the probable (which concerned opinion, evidence, and argument) were combined and submitted to mathematical analysis. The method of least squares was first described by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1805, though Carl Friedrich Gauss presumably made use of it a decade earlier in 1795.

The modern field of statistics emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century in three stages. The first wave, at the turn of the century, was led by the work of Francis Galton and Karl Pearson, who transformed statistics into a rigorous mathematical discipline used for analysis, not just in science, but in industry and politics as well. Galton's contributions included introducing the concepts of