Statistics for Engineers STE3A01

Introduction to Statistics

Lecture 1

Introduction to Statistics

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What is Statistics?
Statistics can mainly be described in the following two ways: Statistics describes a collection of numerical data such as employment statistics, income and expenditure, accident statistics, population statistics, birth and death, exports and imports, etc. Statistics is used to describe a branch of applied mathematics, whose purpose is to provide mathematical techniques for dealing with a collection of data and extracting information from them in compact form by tabulating, summarizing and analyzing it.

Introduction to Statistics

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Why Statistics?
The public and private sector rely on statistical information for such purposes as decision making, regulation, control and planning. Other areas where statistics is used to process information and to make decisions include: Agriculture, Archaeology Biology, Business Environmental studies Fisheries, Forestry Genetics,Industry Medicine, Marketing and many many more.

Introduction to Statistics

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Research Methods
Qualitative research
focuses on the experiences, interpretations, impressions or motivations of an individual or individuals seeks to describe how people view things and why it relates to beliefs, attitudes and changing behaviour

Quantitative research
focuses on measuring and counting facts and the relationships among variables seeks to describe observations through statistical analysis of data

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Statistical Treatment of Data

Note that all qualitative data can be coded quantitatively, i.e. anything that is qualitative can be assigned meaningful numerical values to help us achieve greater insight into the meaning of the data. Observations must be expressed in some numerical form, which can be classied as
measurement data, OR frequency data

Some examples will follow shortly.

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Scales of Measurement
Measurement can be dened as the act of measurement by assigning symbols or numbers to something according to a specic set of rules. When we measure, we attempt to identify the capacity, quantity or degree of something. Scales of measurement are commonly broken down into the following four types: Nominal scale of measurement Ordinal scale of measurement Interval scale of measurement Ratio scale of measurement

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Nominal (categorical) scales

Used to distinguish between features only on the basis of qualitative information Nominal data does not imply quantitative differences. It is meaningless to add, subtract multiply or divide nominal data. Example: In which country do you live? 1 Russia 2 Spain 3 France 4 Poland

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Ordinal scales
Involve differentiation by class Also differentiate within a class of features on the basis of rank according to some qualitative measure Only rank is involved in ordinal scales. We can say, for example, that object A has a higher rank than object B, but we cannot say by how much.

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Ordinal scales (continued)

Example 1: To what extent are you in favor of making abortion legal?
1 2 3 4 5 Very much in favor In favor Neutral Against Very much against

Example 2: To what extent do you agree with the following statement: "Men are better drivers than women".
0 1 2 3 4 Strongly disagree

Fully agree

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Interval Scales
Also known as the cardinal level of measurement Add information about the distance between ranks Must use a standard measurement unit, i.e. one unit on the scale represents the same magnitude on the trait or characteristic being measured across the whole range of the scale. We cannot multiply or divide interval scale data Interval scales have no true or absolute zero

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Interval Scales (continued)

Example 1: Temperature
standard unit is degrees Celsius cannot say 40 C is twice as warm as 20 C a temperature of 0 C does not imply an absence of heat it is merely the point at which water freezes

Example 2: Anxiety score

if anxiety were measured on an interval scale, then a difference between a score of 9 and a score of 10 would represent the same difference in anxiety as would a difference between a score of 30 and a score of 31 it would not be valid to say that a person with a score of 20 was twice as anxious as a person with a score of 10

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Ratio Scales
A ratio scale is an interval scale with the added feature of an absolute zero point All forms of arithmetic operations can be meaningfully applied to ratio scale data. Example: Temperature (Kelvin)
This scale has an absolute zero A temperature of 200 Kelvin is twice as high as a temperature of 100 Kelvin

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Ratio Scales (continued)

Other examples of variables measured on a ratio scale: time distance frequency weight volume

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Classication of Variables
Discrete variables
also known as categorical or non-metric variables describe a nite set of conditions and take values from a nite set of states

Continuous variables
also known as metric variables can assume an innite number of values

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Examples of Discrete Variables

To what age group do you belong? 18-24 years 25-34 years 35-44 years 45 or older what is your gender? what country do you live in? how many cars do you own?

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Examples of Continuous Variables

What is your age?
in complete years? or, number of years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds?

weight time distance temperature

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