Lecture1 / What is What is statistics?

What is statistics?
Statistics: is a very broad subject, with applications in a vast number of di?erent ?elds. In generally one can say that statistics is the methodology
for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and drawing conclusions from informa-
tion. Putting it in other words, statistics is the methodology which scientists
and mathematicians have developed for interpreting and drawing conclusions from collected data. Everything that deals even remotely with the collection, processing, interpretation and presentation of data belongs to the domain of statistics, and so does the detailed planning of that precedes all these activities.
Definition 1.1 (Statistics).
Statistics consists of a body of methods for collecting and analyzing data.
Note
It should be clear that statistics is much more than just the tabulation of numbers and the graphical presentation of these tabulated numbers.




Statistical methods can be used to ?nd answers to the questions like:
• What kind and how much data need to be collected?
• How should we organize and summarize the data?
• How can we analyse the data and draw conclusions from it?
• How can we assess the strength of the conclusions and evaluate their uncertaintye?


That is, statistics provides methods for
1. Design: Planning and carrying out research studies.
2. Description: Summarizing and exploring data.
3. Inference: Making predictions and generalizing about phenomena rep-
resented by the data.