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1 Origin

The word statistics comes from the modern Latin phrase statisticum collegium (lecture about state affairs), from which came the Italian word statista, which means " statesman" or " politician" (compare to status) and the German Statistik, originally designating the analysis of data about the state. It acquired the meaning of the collection and classification of data generally in the early nineteenth century. The collection of data about states and localities continues, largely through national and international statistical services; in particular, censusA census is the process of obtaining information about every member of a population (not necessarily a human population). It can be contrasted with sampling in which information is only obtained from a subset of a population. As such it is a method used fes provide regular information about the populationFor the use of the word population in statistics, see statistical population. In the most common sense of the word, a population is the collection of people—or organisms of a particular species—living in a given geographic area. Populations are studied in.

2 Statistical methods

We describe our knowledge (and ignorance) mathematically and attempt to learn more from whatever we can observe. This requires us to

1. plan our observationsMost scientific work starts with a question about the world we live in. For a statistician, these questions can be classified into a few different kinds. We can start with questions about a single Unit like a biological organism, a manufactured product, a to control their variability ( experimentIn the scientific method, an experiment is a set of actions and observations, performed to verify or falsify a hypothesis or research a causal relationship between phenomena. The experiment is a cornerstone in empirical approach to knowledge. See the list designThe first statistician to consider a methodology for the design of experiments was Sir Ronald A. He described how to test the hypothesis that a certain lady could distinguish by flavor alone whether the milk or the tea was first placed in the cup. While t),
2. summarize a collection of observationsIn descriptive statistics, summary statistics are used to summarize a set of observations, in order to communicate as much as possible as simply as possible. Statisticians commonly try to describe the observations in # a measure of location, or central te to feature their commonality by suppressing details ( descriptive statisticsDescriptive statistics is a branch of statistics that denotes any of the many techniques used to summarize a set of data. In a sense, we are using the data on members of a set to describe the set. The techniques are commonly classified as: # Graphical des), and
3. reach consensus about what the observations tell usThe topics below are usually included in the area of interpreting statistical data . A more formal name for this topic is statistical inference . Statistical assumptions # Likelihood principle # Estimating parameters # Testing statistical hypotheses # Rev about the world we observe ( statistical inferenceThe topics below are usually included in the area of interpreting statistical data . A more formal name for this topic is statistical inference . Statistical assumptions # Likelihood principle # Estimating parameters # Testing statistical hypotheses # Rev).

In some forms of descriptive statistics, notably data mining, the second and third of these steps become so prominent that the first step (planning) appears to become less important. In these disciplines, data often are collected outside the control of the person doing the analysis, and the result of the analysis may be more an operational model than a consensus report about the world.