Lecture Notes: Introduction to Statistics - Population and Samples, Study notes of Statistics

Download Lecture Notes: Introduction to Statistics - Population and Samples and more Study notes Statistics in PDF only on Docsity! Lecture Notes Chapter 1: Introduction to Statistics. Definitions: Data consist of information coming from observations, counts, measurements, or responses. Statistics is the science of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and interpreting data in order to make decisions. A population is the complete collection of all elements (scores, people, measurement, and so on) to be studied. The collection is complete in the sense that it includes all subjects to be studied. A census is the collection of data from every element in a population. A sample is a sub collection of elements drawn from a population. Example 1: In a recent survey, 3002 American adults were asked if they read news on the Internet at least once a week. Responses of American adults (population) Responses of adults in survey (sample) The Nature of Data: A parameter is a numerical measurement describing some characteristic of a population. A statistic is a numerical measurement describing some characteristic of a sample. Example 2: A sample of Americans is selected and the average (mean) amount of time watching television is 4.6 hours per day. (sample statistic) Example 3: Currently, 42% of the governors of the 50 United States are Democrats. (population parameter) Quantitative data consist of numerical measurements or counts.