Statistics

What is Statistics?

Statistics is the science of collecting, organizing, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting numerical data to infer information about a population from a representative sample. The mathematical language it uses is probability theory, but it also relies on other methodologies, such as data gathering techniques and graphical representation methods.

Some scholars consider it to be part of mathematics and others prefer to classify statistics as a distinct science on its own. However, what truly distinguishes this science is its use of data in a context of uncertainty and decision making.

Statistics uses many mathematical concepts, such as mean, skewness, kurtosis, and variance. But it also borrows many tools from linear algebra, stochastic analysis, differential equation, and measure theory among others.

The two main parts of statistics are descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics summarize data from a sample. These summaries are mainly concerned with two aspects of a distribution: central tendency or location (central or typical value) and dispersion or variability (the extent to which data points depart from the center and from other points). Inferential statistics are methods that allow researchers to draw conclusions. The main methods are estimation of parameters and hypothesis testing.

Why is Statistics Important?

Statistics science has found applicability in most scientific and engineering areas. Although not a new science, its body of knowledge continues to grow.

The two main concepts behind statistics are uncertainty and variation, notions that are frequently encountered in physics, chemistry, finance, economics, biology, geology, and many other areas. For example, a researcher may be interested in estimating the age of an archeological piece with a certain precision, or an investor may want to develop an investment strategy based on possible asset returns. In all these cases, there are one or more uncertain outcomes, which through the use of statistics can be converted into a better known and more manageable event.

Statistics + LogicPlum

LogicPlum’s platform uses statistics in many procedures to reduce uncertainty and error, and ensure accurate results. As this tool was designed by experts in statistics, users are assured that the correct and optimal methods are applied, without having to resort to deep personal knowledge in statistical techniques.

Additional Resources

For those interested in learning statistics, a good tutorial is:

Tutorialspoint. (2020). Statistics tutorial. Available at https://www.tutorialspoint.com/statistics/index.htm