What is/are STATISTICS?

• What IS…?– Statistics (singular) IS a way of reasoning, along with

tools & methods, designed to help understand the world

• What ARE…?– statistics (plural) ARE calculations made from data– So, what ARE data? (datum is the singular form)• data are values along with context

– observations, counts, measurements, responses

Word AssociationLet’s try to sum up each field in one word…

Psychology

Economics

Biology

Anthropology

thinking (why we think what we think)

money (flow, purpose, etc.)

life

who?

History

Philosophy

Engineering

Accounting

STATISTICS

what, where, and when?

why?

how?

how much?

VARIATION

Five W’s of Data

• Who• What• When• Where• Why• (How)

Without these, there is NO data

Name # Tickets Destination Departing

Eddie Money 2 Paradise Tonight

Who

• Case– an individual about whom or which (if not people)

we have data– these are essentially the rows of a data table,

which may also be referred to as records• Respondents– answer surveys

• Subjects/Participants or Experimental Units– those on whom we experiment

What & Why• Variables– hold information about same characteristic for multiple

cases– CATEGORICAL

• Names categories & answers questions about how cases fall into those categories

– QUANTITATIVE• must have UNITS & answers questions about quantity of

what is measured

– (Ordinal)• report value w/o natural units (i.e. rate on a scale of 1-10…)• be careful how you treat these

When labeling a variable, always think about the question you want it to answer