23A Taste of Statistics
In the 1950s, a book called How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff got a lot of people thinking and talking about statistics and how we use them. Today we're surrounded by statistics: in public policy, science, sports, and more. It's important to ask questions when you encounter statistics. Let's start with these two questions:
- What is Statistics? and
- What are Statistics? (No, it's not a grammar exercise.)
Statistics is a branch of mathematics. It deals with collecting numerical data, presenting the data in understandable ways, summarizing, analyzing, and interpreting the data so that useful conclusions can be drawn. Statistics are the numerical summaries of the data collected, such as averages or percentages, ...
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