Course: Introduction to Statistics

Topic outline

General

INTRODUCTION TO STATISTICS
Topic 1
Available Resources

The following are resources that you may find helpful as you travel through this course. A description is given for each.
Topic 2
What is statistics?
- The mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data, especially the analysis of population characteristics by inference from sampling. Here is Wikipedia's definition - Please read from beginning through the overview URL
- Assignment - Description of Statistics
Topic 3
Collecting data
- Watch the following prezi to see some information on the different types of samples that people use to collect data. You will have the ability to take notes on the different types of samples as you go through it at your own pace. Page
- Quiz collecting data
Topic 4
How do you collect a simple random sample?
Topic 5
Graphical displays of data

Histograms

Histograms are a common way to display data. They are similar to bar graphs, which are generally used with categorical data. A histogram is generally used to display quantative data. The bars are connected and each one shows how many values fall in each range.
Topic 6
Stemplots

Stemplots are another useful way to display quantative data and many times are used to build a histogram. If you take your stemplot and rotate 90 degrees and draw rectangles around your data, you will have a histogram.
Topic 7
Numerical Descriptions of data

Mean and Median

Mean is also known as average, which you are probably more familiar with. Median is your middle value, similar to the median of a highway being in the middle of the roads.
Topic 8
Standard deviation

Standard deviation shows the variation or spread of a set of data. For a single set of data it may not show us a whole lot. It is very useful though in comparing sets of data. Such as a comparison of test scores of males versus females. We can tell which group has scores that are more spread out and then explore why one groups scores varied more than the others.
Topic 9
Boxplots

Boxplots break your data into quarters. The box shows where the middle 50% of your data lies. It also shows if we have outliers (extreme values) in our data. Boxplots are very useful where comparing sets of data.
- Please watch the following video on constructing boxplots Page
- Steps to construct a boxplot or box and whisker plot Page
Topic 10
Outliers

In this section we will look at how to determine if any of our observations are outliers. Outliers can affect many of our measures, but primarily our mean. If there is an outlier, our mean gets pulled towards it. For example, if a basketball player averages 8 points per game and scores 30 points in a game, his new average will rise considerably due to the outlying value.
Topic 11
Misleading statistics

Statistics can be displayed in a manner to show what we want. All we need to do is adjust our scales or axis. Many times the media will do this to make the data appear in a way that they would like so that they can try to convince us about a certain situation they are trying to convey.
- Watch the video on misleading statistics. It discusses ways that you are able to manipulate your statistics to show what you want. Disregard the assignment given at the end of the video. Page
- Assignment - Misleading statistics
Topic 12
Alignment document