BASIC STATISTICS

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

HISTORY OF STATISTICS

Some scholars pinpoint the origin of statistics to 1663, with the publication of Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt.Early applications of statistical thinking revolved around the needs of states to base policy on demographic and economic data, hence its stat- etymology. The scope of the discipline of statistics broadened in the early 19th century to include the collection and analysis of data in general. Today, statistics is widely employed in government, business, and the natural and social sciences. Its mathematical foundations were laid in the 17th century with the development of probability theory by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. Probability theory arose from the study of games of chance. The method of least squares was first described by Carl Friedrich Gauss around 1794. The use of modern computers has expedited large-scale statistical computation, and has also made possible new methods that are impractical to perform manually. The American Statistical Association has ranked Deming, Fisher, and Rao as the greatest statisticians of all time.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT

STATISTICS......

Whether you think about it or not, We use statistics everyday and we rely upon standards to make our lives easier. These are some of many everyday situations where a good understanding of statistics can serve as a guide to making better decisions.

WHAT DO I MEAN ?

Even though you may not have realized it, you probably have made some statistical statements in your everyday conversation or thinking.

Statements like "I sleep for about eight hours per night on average" and "You are more likely to pass the exam if you start preparing earlier" are actually statistical in nature.

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means a population is the whole set of items from which a data sample can be drawn, so a sample is only a portion of the population data. Features of a sample are described by statistics.

Statistical methods enable us to arrange, analyse and interpret the sample data obtained from a population.