STAT151 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Sewage Treatment, Statistical Inference

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Statistics
• Course: STAT151
• Professor: Rosana Fok

Document Summary

Statistics - reasoning, collection of tools and methods and designed to help us understand the world with the use of data. Statistics (plural) - are particular calculations made from data. Statistical theory - collection, organization and interpretation of data. Find answers to questions that cannot be answered otherwise (e. g. what are the long term effects to a specific medication) Experiments usually result in different outcomes (variability) (e. g. chemical concentrations in water samples at a sewage treatment plant) Generalize the finding from the sample to the entire population if possible. *to understand and apply inferential procedures we need to understand probability theory. Population of interest - entire collection of individuals. Sample - a subset/fraction of the population, selected in a prescribed manner. Parameter - number that describes population characteristics (often unknown) Statistic - number that describes the characteristics of the sample, *greek letters often denote parameters and latin for statistic.