Why do we study "STATISTICS"?

Introduction to Statistics:

The word statistics came from the word "STATE". The general interest to the Government of any state is to know about the socio-economic structures of the population. Especially the interests converge on the total number of residents, their monthly average income, daily expenditures, and the summary of collected tax, etc. All such information is nothing but a form of Data. That is why STATISTICS came from the word "STATE".

Contents: 1. Why do we study "STATISTICS"? 2. Types Of Statistics: 2.1 Descriptive Statistics: 2.2 Inferential Statistics: 3. Early Development of Statistics in India: 4. Misuses of Statistics: 5. Online Lecture

Why do we study "STATISTICS"?

Example 1: 

Ron is the CEO of an organization.  He wants to know the monthly average income of the Indian Population. Ron has in total of 50 workers. So, to get the answer,  they will survey each and every individual of the population. India has a huge population of 130 crore. So can we imagine how much time do they need to answer the question?

Roughly, assume that the survey is finished within 5 years. Then the next question comes that, does there exist a supercomputer that deals with such huge data. Let's assume, Ron has such a computer, and they got his desired answer after 5 years. So does the result is relevant at the current time. 

So it is vivid that the survey of the whole population is not the correct way of solving. Instead, they could do a random survey of people with fewer numbers which is within the computational ability. 

Example 2:

Do you know that the  Google map application works due to the algorithm developed using Statistical Tools?

There are plenty of such modern examples that involve the application of statistics.

Types Of Statistics:

There are mainly two types of Statistics,viz., Descriptive and Inferential Statistics.

Descriptive Statistics: 

This branch of statistics concerns about collection, organization, summarization, and presentation of data. It provides us with numerical and graphical methods to find out the underlying patterns in a data set. 

Inferential Statistics:

This branch of statistics helps to predict and draw a conclusion about the population characteristics based on the data collected. 

Early Development of Statistics in India:

The word 'Statistics' has been derived from the Latin word 'Status', which means 'related to states'. The use of statistics in ancient India can be found in 'Kautilya's Arthashastra', in 'Ain-i-Akbari' and in many other places.

In India, Physics professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis first introduced statistics as a scientific discipline. He came in contact with two world-famous statistician Karl Pearson and R.A. Fisher while he was studying at Cambridge. He was interested in their works and formed a group of talented researchers and scientists. He was the founder of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). 

Misuses of Statistics:

Very often we overlooked the existence of a hidden or lurking variable in our analysis. It might lead us to a completely opposite result. So we have to be very careful in dealing with such variables. An example can easily explain this fact. 

There is a Pass-Fail data of an experiment given as follows.

Proportion of Pass for Male:  233/557 = 0.418

Proportion of Pass for Female:  88/282 =0.312

One may conclude from the above data that, the proportion of Pass for male candidates is much greater than that of the female.

Let's see the same data faculty wise.

In Science:

Proportion of Pass for Male:  151/186 = 0.812

Proportion of Pass for Female:  16/18 =0.889

In Arts:

Proportion of Pass for Male:  82/371= 0.221

Proportion of Pass for Female:  72/264 =0.273

So it is vivid that in both Science and Arts the proportion of pass for females is greater than that of females. Hence the presence of a lurking variable is leading us in a different conclusion. 

Presently, we live in a world that heavily depends on information. We do take our decisions based on the analysis of past data.  Nowadays television, newspaper, smartphones, radio, and magazines are the main source of different kinds of numerical information. So a person has to be numerically literate to be an effective citizen. 

Get my Lecture: