• read Appendix G!

Purposes of statistics
 

statistics =

1) set of tools for systematically organizing and summarizing information and drawing conclusions

2) numerical facts about or descriptions

• currency of science

"I am too familiar with the manner in which actual data are met with the suggestion that other data, if they were collected, might show something else to believe it to have any value as an argument. 'Statistics on the table, please,' can be my sole reply."

- Karl Pearson, 1910
 
 

• empirical
• data = coded observations
• observations = records or descriptions of some phenomenon based on what a person (researcher or study participant) sees, hears, tastes, smells, thinks, or feels, or what a measuring instrument detects
• convert observations into numbers or symbols systematically
• data are abstractions or interpretations of the world

Statistics needed to distill, summarize, and make sense of data