Introductory Statistics and Analytics: A Resampling Perspective

INTRODUCTION

As of the writing of this book, the fields of statistics and data science are evolving rapidly to meet the changing needs of business, government, and research organizations. It is an oversimplification, but still useful, to think of two distinct communities as you proceed through the book:

1. The traditional academic and medical research communities that typically conduct extended research projects adhering to rigorous regulatory or publication standards, and
2. Business and large organizations that use statistical methods to extract value from their data, often on the fly. Reliability and value are more important than academic rigor to this data science community.

IF YOU CAN'T MEASURE IT, YOU CAN'T MANAGE IT

You may be familiar with this phrase or its cousin: if you can't measure it, you can't fix it. The two come up frequently in the context of Total Quality Management or Continuous Improvement programs in organizations. The flip side of these expressions is the fact that if you do measure something and make the measurements available to decision-makers, the something that you measure is likely to change.

Toyota found that placing a real-time gas-mileage gauge on the dashboard got people thinking about their driving habits and how they relate to gas consumption. As a result, their gas mileage—miles they drove per gallon of gas—improved.

In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration ...