Statistics

Statistics is the collection, processing, interpretation and presentation of large amounts of data. The name is derived from the modern Latin phrase statisticum collegium, meaning lesson on state matters.

Modern statistics emerged in the late 19th century. Two main methods are used: descriptive statistics, which summarize data from a sample using concepts such as mean value and standard deviation, and inferential statistics, which draw conclusions from stochastic events.

There is a general view that statistics are all too often deliberately abused by showing only data favorable to the presenter. Distrust of statistics is associated with the statement, wrongly attributed to the English statesman Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

History

The origins of statistics go back a long way: the Arabian scholar al-Khalil ibn Ahmed al-Farahidi (718 – 786), the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli (1655 – 1705), the English priest Thomas Bayes (about 1701 – 1761), the French scholar Pierre-Simon marquis of Laplace (1749 – 1827), the German scholar Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 – 1855), the English mathematician Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890 – 1962), the English mathematician Carl Pearson (1857 – 1936, and many others have contributed to it.

Related concepts

• error propagation
• mean value
• standard deviation
• stochastic variable