Statistics for EDAIC/FRCA/FCAI
‘Basics’
Statistics: ‘The science of collection, analysis and interpretation of data.’ It helps us in research, writing publications, and critical assessment of published literature. Descriptive statistics include the collection and presentation of data, while Analytic statistics is concerned with data interpretation and drawing inference.
Data: is the information collected in form of numbers, labels or observations.
Population: the entire set of individuals from which the sample data is collected. Populations are described in terms of parameters in statistics.
Sample: It is the group of individuals/ set of data selected to represent the population to which it belongs. Small samples are easy to collect and interpret but can be misguiding as they may not include all values characteristics of parent population and therefore don’t represent the whole population accurately. Samples are described in terms of statistics.
Detailed data classification table
Categorical data can be presented as Ratio: when the data point has zero as baseline e.g. Kelvin temperature scale, or Interval: when data has values on either side of zero e.g. Centigrade temperature scale.
Statistical importance of data: Continuous > Ordinal > Nominal.