What Are The Concepts of Statistics

In college one of the courses, I had to take was statistics. It was interesting to find out that we use statistics in our daily life, as well as our business life. I thoroughly enjoyed this class because it gave me valuable information to use in real-life and daily life.

In reading the material you find that there are three reasons for understanding statistics.

The first reason is that data is everywhere in the world from home, companies, restaurants, and many other places as well. In your home, you use statistics to test the water for a shower or to give a baby a bath. Within companies, they use statistics to compile data for the upcoming week, budgets, sales, payroll, inventory, and many other things. In restaurants, they use statistics the same way that companies do when they project the sales for the upcoming shifts, days, or weeks.  Restaurants also use statistical data to see how well the people like a certain meal that they serve. They also use statistical techniques to project how many people they would need to cover the shifts during the workweek.

Secondly, statistics are used for the many decisions that we have to face in our life. Would you believe that everyone uses statistical techniques in their daily life? From groceries, bills, gas, clothes, and other means that you need in your daily life. Cooking for example uses statistical data so that the meals that you create come out tasting the way that they should. If the meal does not taste like it should somewhere along the line the recipe was messed up. You use statistics in every aspect of your life. Driving from point A to point B requires this much gas. How long would a tank of gas last you for the week depending on the size of your vehicle, miles per gallon of gas used, and how many stops you make in between point A and point B.

Lastly, it does not matter what career you are in statistical data exists everywhere. You need this information to make informed decisions that will involve data in many different ways. This will allow you to make decisions more effectively by using statistical techniques throughout your business. It is truly amazing the information you find out by using statistical techniques.

Did you know that statistics is all about numerical information and using it to find out different types of data is something that was interesting to me during college. Using statistics you can find out many different things such as the deaths related to alcoholism, the salary of college graduates, how many miles the average automobile drives per year, and the difference in the stock market or Dow Jones.

Further reading shows that you learn about statistics and what it means for the world around us. Statistics is used for collecting, analyzing, interpreting, organizing, and presenting data that will help in making more effective decisions in the world.

Did you know that the largest potato chip market is Frito-Lay. They make up more than 64 percent of the potato chip market by selling over 800 million pounds of potato chips around the world. This is amazing statistics, to say the least and that is quite a few potato chips scattered around the world.

Statistics requires you to gather relevant information before making a decision about the result you have found. You have to keep your information about your statistical problems organized so that you can present it to people in a orderly fashion. Research is the main key to coming up with the right answer to any of the problems that you may face in the world today.

While learning about statistics I learned that there are different types of statistics that cover different parts of your research. In descriptive statistics you have to summarize, organize, and present your data in a very informative way so that the people that you are explaining it understand how and where you received your information. Using descriptive statistics is not for the past, however, we use them to project future statistics on a variety of things like population, college graduates, high school dropouts, single mothers, single fathers, and many other things as well.

Another type of statistics is inferential statistics which is used to estimate a property of the population based on a sample of the information. An example would be finding out the percentage of high school students that could accurately total the cost of a meal on a restaurant menu. Best guess would probably be around 70 percent of high school students correctly totaled the amount of the meal from the restaurant menu by using inferential statistics.

About a year ago I received something in the mail from Nielsen and it was a survey to see what programs I watched during the day, night, and morning hours. It was interesting, to say the least, and they also paid you money for doing the survey. However, this is another way they use statistics to find out what percentage of the United States watches certain shows. In one of the examples in the book, it showed that they used a population of around 800 prime time viewers, and around 40 percent of the viewers watched “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” during that week. This type of statistical technique is used to set the advertising rates or to cancel shows that do not meet the standards. It was a long process for the week because you had to notate every show you watched, what time it was on, who watched the shows, and you could even comment on the show that you had watched.

Now, the difference between a population and a sample in statistics is that the population involves the whole population, sets of individuals, measurements or objects of interest obtained from all individuals within the group or population. A sample is only one part of the population of interest. If we studied the whole population it would result in large expenditures that companies could not afford. By taking a sample and obtaining information from that sample would save the company some money to find the statistical data that they need to make an informed decision.