what is/are statistics? what is…? – statistics (singular) is a way of reasoning, along with...
TRANSCRIPT
What is/are STATISTICS?
• What IS…?– Statistics (singular) IS a way of reasoning, along with
tools & methods, designed to help understand the world
• What ARE…?– statistics (plural) ARE calculations made from data– So, what ARE data? (datum is the singular form)• data are values along with context
– observations, counts, measurements, responses
Word AssociationLet’s try to sum up each field in one word…
Psychology
Economics
Biology
Anthropology
thinking (why we think what we think)
money (flow, purpose, etc.)
life
who?
History
Philosophy
Engineering
Accounting
STATISTICS
what, where, and when?
why?
how?
how much?
VARIATION
Five W’s of Data
• Who• What• When• Where• Why• (How)
Without these, there is NO data
Name # Tickets Destination Departing
Eddie Money 2 Paradise Tonight
Who
• Case– an individual about whom or which (if not people)
we have data– these are essentially the rows of a data table,
which may also be referred to as records• Respondents– answer surveys
• Subjects/Participants or Experimental Units– those on whom we experiment
What & Why• Variables– hold information about same characteristic for multiple
cases– CATEGORICAL
• Names categories & answers questions about how cases fall into those categories
– QUANTITATIVE• must have UNITS & answers questions about quantity of
what is measured
– (Ordinal)• report value w/o natural units (i.e. rate on a scale of 1-10…)• be careful how you treat these
When labeling a variable, always think about the question you want it to answer