Year 1

The word statistics has two meanings. In the more common usage, statistics refers to numerical facts. The numbers that represent the income of a family, the age of a student, the starting salary of an employee on a given position, are examples of statistics in this sense of the word.

 

The second meaning of statistics, which is concerned in this unit, refers to the field or discipline of study. In this sense of the word, statistics is defined as follows:

 

Statistics is a group of methods used to collect, present, analyze, and utilization of numerical data to make inferences and reach decisions in the face of uncertainty in economics, business, and other social and physical sciences.