Collecting Data
Statistics deal with the collection, presentation, analysis and interpretation of data.Insurance (of people and property), which now dominates many aspects of our lives, utilises statistical methodology. Social scientists, psychologists, pollsters, medical researchers, governments and many others use statistical methodology to study behaviours of populations. You need to know the following statistical terms. A variable is a characteristic of interest in each element of the sample or population. For example, we may be interested in the age of each of the seven dwarfs. An observation is the value of a variable for one particular element of the sample or population, for example, the age of the dwarf called Bashful (= 619 years). A data set is all the observations of a particular variable for the elements of the sample, for example, a complete list of the ages of the seven dwarfs {685, 702,498,539,402,685, 619}. Collecting data Census The population is the complete set of data under consideration. For example, a population may be all the females in Ireland between the ages of 12 and 18, all the sixth year students in your school or the number of red cars in Ireland. A census is a collection of data relating to a population. A list of every item in a population is called a sampling frame. Sample A sample is a small part of the population selected. A random sample is a sample in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. Data gathered from a sample are called statistics. Conclusions drawn from a sample can then be applied to the whole population (this is called statistical inference).
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