what is statistics? ?

What is Statistics??

Is it this????

Is it this????

Is it this????

Two trains are traveling toward each other on the same track, each at 60 miles per hour. When they are exactly 120 miles apart, a fly takes off from the front of one of the trains, flying toward the other train……….

Is it this????

Two trains are traveling toward each other on the same track, each at 60 miles per hour. When they are exactly 120 miles apart, a fly takes off from the front of one of the trains, flying toward the other train……….

Statistics is all about data.

No….Not that D

ata

Data is a collection of Information

The Information could be in the form of

NUMBERS

CATEGORIES

NUMBERS

Weight

Salary

Facebook Friends

Cell phone minutes

Time spent in traffic

Number of Tweets

Cholesterol Level

Cost of Haircut

CATEGORIES

Favorite movie

Male/FemalePolitical Affiliation

Pepsi/Coca Cola Drinker

Type of car you driveiPhone owner or not

Mac/PC User

Tattooed or not

In part, Statistics is displaying data

Or…..more creativelyBlue – Twitter PostsOrange - Flickr postsWhite - Both

Or…..more creatively

Minutes Per Day Delayed in Traffic

Statistics also uses data to answer questions

What does the average Golden Retriever puppy weigh?

What percentage of teenagers have tattoos?

If the Presidential election was held today, what percent of voters would vote for the candidate that you support?

To answer these questions data are collected from a small sample

Some teenagers

All teenagers

and used to represent a much larger group.

Statistics tells us how to select the sample

and how accurate the results will be.

Statistics is also used to make decisions

Can Astrology really predict personality traits?

Can dogs be trained to detect lung cancer from smelling a person’s breath?

In statistics, we learn how to design experiments that are used to determine cause and effect relationships.

Can the dog really pick out someone with cancer or was the dog just lucky?

If the dog couldn’t detect lung cancer, we would still expect him to be right some times.

.

Statistics helps us to quantify ideas like this.

How many times would the dog have to be right for us to believe he was not just lucky?

In statistics we learn how to collect and analyze data, and then draw conclusions from

the data.