STAT150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Selection Bias, Data Analysis, Observational Study
13 Nov 2018
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Document Summary
Science of learning from data - converting data to information. Involves designing a study, then collecting, presenting, analysing data and interpreting the results. A primary objective of the statistician is to obtain information about a target population using a sample. The target population comprises all relevant subjects of interest. The sample is a manageable subset, selected to make the study feasible. Formulate the question of interest (what? why? who?) Determine the measurements to be collected (the variables) Define the method of data collection (how? where? when?) The sample should be representative of the target population (not biased) and large enough to give accurate information about the population. Ideally the observations should be independent of each other. Only a representative sample should be used to make inferences about the target population. A representative sample is unbiased and large enough to give accurate information about the population.
