ECON 2B03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Statistical Inference, Descriptive Statistics
12 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Statistics is a branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, presentation and interpretation of data. Broadly speaking, statistics provides a rigorous framework for describing, analyzing, and drawing inference on the basis of data. A: mainly due to uncertainty (we cannot know with certainty many things in life, even though they clearly exist) In any statistical study, we analyze information/data obtained from individuals. Individuals can be people, animals, households, plants, or any object of interest. A variable is any characteristic of an individual: ex: age, height, income, blood pressure, ethnicity, occupation. A (cid:448)aria(cid:271)le (cid:448)aries a(cid:373)o(cid:374)g i(cid:374)di(cid:448)iduals (as opposed to a (cid:858)(cid:272)o(cid:374)sta(cid:374)t(cid:859) (cid:449)hi(cid:272)h does not) The distribution of a variable tells us what values the variables takes and how often/likely it takes these values. Population: set of all possible observations on some characteristics (e. g. age, height, income) Random sample: once obtained if every member of the population has an equal chance of being in the same sample.
