Statistical Inference

Dr fahd amjad

Why study statistics

without data, you are just another
person with an opinion.
Statistics is the scientific discipline
that provides us methods to make
sense of data
Fields Medicine, agriculture,
engineering, social sciences etc.
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Throughout your personal and professional life, you will

need to understand and use data to make decisions. To
do this, you must be able to
1. Decide whether existing data is adequate or whether
additional information is required.
2. If necessary, collect more information in a
reasonable and thoughtful way.
3. Summarize the available data in a useful and
informative manner.
4. Analyze the available data.
5. Draw conclusions, make decisions, and assess the
risk of an incorrect decision.
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Nature and role of variability

Statistical methods allow us to collect, describe,
analyze and draw conclusions from data.
Suppose that every student was enrolled in the
same number of courses, spent exactly the
same amount of money on textbooks this
semester, and favored increasing student fees
to support expanding library services.
For this population, is there variability in
number of courses, amount spent on books.
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 The situation just described is obviously

unrealistic. Populations with no variability are
exceedingly rare, and they are of little
statistical interest because they present no
challenge! In fact, variability is almost
universal.
It is variability that makes life (and the life of a
statistician, in particular) interesting. We need
to understand variability to be able to collect,
describe, analyze, and draw conclusions from
data in a sensible way.
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Which one has more

variation?

Second one has more variability as its

spread is more.
The ability to recognize unusual values in
the presence of variability is an important
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aspect of most statistical procedures

Statistics and data analysis

process
The data analysis process can be viewed as a
sequence of steps that lead from planning to data
collection to making informed conclusions based on
the resulting data. The process can be organized into
the following six steps:
1. Understanding the nature of the problem.
2. Deciding what to measure and how to
measure it.
3. Data collection.
4. Data summarization and preliminary analysis.
The running
5. Formal data analysis.
speed of the
person as a
6. Interpretation of results.
function of its
weights???

Sample and population

The entire collection of individuals or
objects about which information is
desired is called the population of
interest.
A sample is a subset of
population, selected for study

the

Types of data
The individuals or objects in any particular
population
typically
possess
many
characteristics that might be studied.
A variable is any characteristic whose value
may change from one individual or object to
another. For example, calculator brand is a
variable, and so are number of textbooks
purchased and distance to the university.

Data result from making observations either on

a single variable or simultaneously on two or
more variables.
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 A univariate data set consists of

observations on a single variable
made on individuals in a sample or
population.
There are two types of univariate
data sets: categorical and numerical.

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Example

This is univariate categorical data set

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Multivariate data
This is called a bivariate data set.
Multivariate data result from obtaining
a category or value for each of two or
more attributes (so bivariate data are a
special case of multivariate data).
For example, multivariate data would
result from determining height, weight,
pulse rate, and systolic blood pressure
for each individual in a group.
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What kind of data is this??

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Two Types of Numerical

Data
There are two different types of
numerical
data:
discrete
and
continuous.
Discrete data usually arise when
observations are determined by
counting

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Example

Suppose that instead

of the number of text
messages sent, the
time spent texting
had been recorded.

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Frequency Distributions and Bar

Charts for Categorical Data

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Displaying categorical data :

Comparing pie chart with bar chart
When constructing a comparative bar
chart we use the relative frequency rather
than the frequency to construct the scale
on the vertical axis so that we can make
meaningful comparisons even if the
sample sizes are not the same.

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 Pie Charts

A categorical data set can also be summarized using a pie

chart. In a pie chart, a circle is used to represent the whole
data set, with slices of the pie representing the possible
categories. The size of the slice for a particular category is
proportional to the corresponding frequency or relative
frequency. Pie charts are most effective for summarizing
data sets when there are not too many different categories.

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Segmented Bar chart

A pie chart can be difficult to construct by
hand, and the circular shape sometimes makes
it difficult to compare areas for different
categories, particularly when the relative
frequencies for categories are similar.
The segmented bar graph (also sometimes
called a stacked bar graph) avoids these
difficulties by using a rectangular bar rather
than a circle to represent the entire data set.
The bar is divided into segments, with different
segments representing different categories
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Displaying numerical data: stem

and leaf display

A stem-and-leaf display is an effective and compact way to

summarize univariate numerical data. Each number in the
data set is broken into two pieces, a stem and a leaf. The
stem is the first part of the number and consists of the
beginning digit(s). The leaf is the last part of the number
and consists of the final digit(s).

Good to identify
outliers

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Frequency Distributions and

Histograms for Continuous Numerical
Data

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Measure of central tendency

The two most widely used measures
of center are the mean and the
median.

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 These

measures are called the

population
variance
and the
population standard deviation
and are denoted by and ,
respectively. (We again use a
lowercase
Greek
letter
for
a
population characteristic.)

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