The Big Picture Statistics is the science of analyzing data to gain useful information. Inferential Statistics includes methods for reaching decisions and making estimates about a large group of individuals on the basis of data from a small sample of the group. The methods of inferential statistics depend on the assumption that the observed data is randomly sampled, so we will learn a little about the probability of random sampling.
Conclusions drawn from the analysis of data can only be as good as the data itself.
We will allude briefly to the important statistical branch of the design of experiments , which gives methods for generating data that worthy of analysis. Here is a small portion of data collected from hundreds of patients who were admitted to the burn center of a university hospital over a period of several years. A variable is a characteristic that might take on different values among different individuals. In this example, the values of seven variables have been recorded for each individual. A quantitative variable is measured as a number.