Basics of Statistics
Definition of Statistics:
Before telling anything I will start with the simple definition of statistics. “Statistics is a branch of mathematics that involves collecting or summarizing information, analyzing, manipulating, and representing the data.”
While we discuss statistics, the first thing that comes to our mind is the data. so when will we use statistics or which is concerned with:
- Designing any experiments,
- Collecting information to help our understanding,
- Concluding data, and
- Estimate the present or predict the future.
Today, Statistics has become an essential tool in the work of many academic disciplines. It is also an integral part of many aspects of society such as Finance, government, the tech industry, and so on. As statistics are increasing in so many areas of our lives, it has very desirable to understand and practice statistical thinking.
Population vs Sample:
From the definition of statistics, we got a much better idea of what statistics is and what it deals with. Actually, it works with data sets. — What data set is? It is nothing but a collection of data.
When we work with it and conduct any statistical analysis first we need to ensure that the data is relevant and valid according to the circumstance.
Keep remembering the proper data set gives us a correct outcome, effective conclusion, and solution. This is why we need to know the fundamental difference between Population data sets and Sample data sets, whether the data set we are dealing with is part of a population data set or a sample data set.
From the figure, the idea is pretty much clear what is Population and what is Sample? Yes, it is so simple.
Population refers to all items or the whole number of items or an entire group of items of something within the field of study or what we want to analyze. Obviously, examples will give us a better understanding. For example, the Population set is the number of all the students in a single class, such as all the students in the mathematics class — Which is the entire population of the mathematics class. The number we have obtained when we use a population is called a parameter. It is hard to observe in real life.
Sample on the other hand is a subset and a small portion of the population. The sample data size will always be smaller than that of the population. working with sample data is helpful when the population size is too large. Also, it is a key to accurate statistical design sometimes. For example, rather than taking all of the students in mathematics class, we will take some students in our analysis. It is easy to observe and easy to conduct.
There are two major parts of statistics are known descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Which I will discuss in the next.
