EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS WITH COMPUTER

EDUCATION: COURSE INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION TO
STATISTICS
 WHY STUDY STATISTICS?
1. Data are everywhere
2. Statistical techniques are used to make many decisions that
affect our lives
3. No matter what your career, you will make professional
decisions that involve data. An understanding of statistical
methods will help you make these decisions efectively
 APPLICATIONS OF STATISTICAL
CONCEPTS IN THE BUSINESS
WORLD
• Finance – correlation and regression, index numbers, time series
analysis
• Marketing – hypothesis testing, chi-square tests, nonparametric
statistics
• Personel – hypothesis testing, chi-square tests, nonparametric
tests
• Operating management – hypothesis testing, estimation, analysis
of variance, time series analysis
 STATISTICS
• The science of collecting, organizing, presenting, analyzing, and
interpreting data to assist in making more effective decisions
• Statistical analysis – used to manipulate summarize, and
investigate data, so that useful decision-making information
results.
 TYPES OF STATISTICS
• Descriptive statistics – Methods of organizing, summarizing, and
presenting data in an informative way
• Inferential statistics – The methods used to determine something
about a population on the basis of a sample
• Population –The entire set of individuals or objects of interest or the
measurements obtained from all individuals or objects of interest
• Sample – A portion, or part, of the population of interest
 INFERENTIAL STATISTICS

• Estimation
• e.g., Estimate the population mean
weight using the sample mean
weight
• Hypothesis testing
• e.g., Test the claim that the
population mean weight is 70 kg

Inference is the process of drawing conclusions or making decisions about a

population based on sample results
 SAMPLING
a sample should have the same characteristics
as the population it is representing.
Sampling can be:
• with replacement: a member of the population may be chosen
more than once (picking the candy from the bowl)
• without replacement: a member of the population may be chosen
only once (lottery ticket)
 SAMPLING METHODS
Sampling methods can be:
• random (each member of the population has an equal chance
of being selected)
• nonrandom

The actual process of sampling causes sampling

errors. For example, the sample may not be large
enough or representative of the population. Factors not
related to the sampling process cause nonsampling
errors. A defective counting device can cause a
nonsampling error.
 RANDOM SAMPLING
METHODS
• simple random sample (each sample of the same size has an
equal chance of being selected)
• stratified sample (divide the population into groups called
strata and then take a sample from each stratum)
• cluster sample (divide the population into strata and then
randomly select some of the strata. All the members from
these strata are in the cluster sample.)
• systematic sample (randomly select a starting point and take
every n-th piece of data from a listing of the population)
 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

• Collect data
• e.g., Survey

• Present data
• e.g., Tables and graphs

• Summarize data
• e.g., Sample mean =
X i

n
 STATISTICAL DATA
The collection of data that are relevant to the problem being
studied is commonly the most difficult, expensive, and time-
consuming part of the entire research project.
Statistical data are usually obtained by counting or measuring
items.
Primary data are collected specifically for the analysis desired
Secondary data have already been compiled and are available for
statistical analysis
A variable is an item of interest that can take on many different
numerical values.
A constant has a fixed numerical value.
 DATA
Statistical data are usually obtained by counting or measuring items.
Most data can be put into the following categories:
• Qualitative - data are measurements that each fail into one of
several categories. (hair color, ethnic groups and other attributes of
the population)
• quantitative - data are observations that are measured on a
numerical scale (distance traveled to college, number of children in
a family, etc.)
 QUALITATIVE DATA
Qualitative data are generally described by words or
letters. They are not as widely used as quantitative data
because many numerical techniques do not apply to the
qualitative data. For example, it does not make sense to
find an average hair color or blood type.
Qualitative data can be separated into two subgroups:
dichotomic (if it takes the form of a word with two options
(gender - male or female)
polynomic (if it takes the form of a word with more than
two options (education - primary school, secondary school
and university).
 QUANTITATIVE DATA
Quantitative data are always numbers and are the
result of counting or measuring attributes of a population.
Quantitative data can be separated into two
subgroups:
• discrete (if it is the result of counting (the number of
students of a given ethnic group in a class, the number of
books on a shelf, ...)
• continuous (if it is the result of measuring (distance traveled,
weight of luggage, …)
 TYPES OF VARIABLES
Variables

Qualitative Quantitative

Dichotomic Polynomic Discrete Continuous

Children in family, Amount of income

Gender, marital Brand of Pc, hair
Strokes on a golf tax paid, weight of a
status color
hole student
 NUMERICAL SCALE OF
MEASUREMENT:
• Nominal – consist of categories in each of which the number of respective
observations is recorded. The categories are in no logical order and have no
particular relationship. The categories are said to be mutually exclusive
since an individual, object, or measurement can be included in only one of
them.
• Ordinal – contain more information. Consists of distinct categories in
which order is implied. Values in one category are larger or smaller than
values in other categories (e.g. rating-excelent, good, fair, poor)
• Interval – is a set of numerical measurements in which the distance
between numbers is of a known, sonstant size.
• Ratio – consists of numerical measurements where the distance between
numbers is of a known, constant size, in addition, there is a nonarbitrary
zero point.
 DATA PRESENTATION
„ The question is“ said Alice, „whether you can
make words mean so many different things.“
„The question is,“ said Humpty Dumpty, „which is
to be master-that´s all.“ (Lewis Carroll)
 NUMERICAL PRESENTATION
OF QUALITATIVE DATA
• pivot table (qualitative dichotomic statistical attributes)
• contingency table (qualitative statistical attributes from which at
least one of them is polynomic)

You should know how to convert absolute

values to relative ones (%).
 FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS –
NUMERICAL PRESENTATION OF
QUANTITATIVE DATA
• Frequency distribution – shows the frequency, or number of
occurences, in each of several categories. Frequency distributions
are used to summarize large volumes of data values.
• When the raw data are measured on a qunatitative scale, either
interval or ration, categories or classes must be designed for the
data values before a frequency distribution can be formulated.
 STEPS FOR CONSTRUCTING A
m n
FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION
h
 max  min 
1. Determine the number of classes m
2. Determine the size of each class
3. Determine the starting point for the first class
4. Tally the number of values that occur in each class
5. Prepare a table of the distribution using actual counts and/ or
percentages (relative frequencies)
 FREQUENCY TABLE
• absolute frequency “ni” (Data TabData AnalysisHistogram)
• relative frequency “fi”
Cumulative frequency distribution shows the total number of
occurrences that lie above or below certain key values.
• cumulative frequency “Ni”
• cumulative relative frequency “Fi”
 CHARTS AND GRAPHS
• Frequency distributions are good ways to present the essential
aspects of data collections in concise and understable terms
• Pictures are always more effective in displaying large data
collections
 HISTOGRAM
• Frequently used to graphically present interval and ratio data
• Is often used for interval and ratio data
• The adjacent bars indicate that a numerical range is being
summarized by indicating the frequencies in arbitrarily chosen
classes
 FREQUENCY POLYGON
• Another common method for graphically presenting interval and
ratio data
• To construct a frequency polygon mark the frequencies on the
vertical axis and the values of the variable being measured on the
horizontal axis, as with the histogram.
• If the purpose of presenting is comparation with other
distributions, the frequency polygon provides a good summary of
the data
 OGIVE
• A graph of a cumulative frequency distribution
• Ogive is used when one wants to determine how many
observations lie above or below a certain value in a distribution.
• First cumulative frequency distribution is constructed
• Cumulative frequencies are plotted at the upper class limit of each
category
• Ogive can also be constructed for a relative frequency distribution.
 PIE CHART
• The pie chart is an effective way of displaying the percentage
breakdown of data by category.
• Useful if the relative sizes of the data components are to be
emphasized
• Pie charts also provide an effective way of presenting ratio- or
interval-scaled data after they have been organized into categories
PIE CHART
 BAR CHART
• Another common method for graphically presenting nominal and
ordinal scaled data
• One bar is used to represent the frequency for each category
• The bars are usually positioned vertically with their bases located
on the horizontal axis of the graph
• The bars are separated, and this is why such a graph is frequently
used for nominal and ordinal data – the separation emphasize the
plotting of frequencies for distinct categories
 TIME SERIES GRAPH

• The time series graph is a graph of data

that have been measured over time.
• The horizontal axis of this graph
represents time periods and the vertical
axis shows the numerical values
corresponding to these time periods
 RECOMMENDED LITERATURE:

 Hanke E. J, Reitsch A. G: Understanding Business Statistics

 Anderson, D.R. - Sweeney, D.J. - Williams, T.A.: Statistics for Business
and Economics. South-Western Pub., 2005, 320 p., ISBN 978-032-422-
486-3
 Jaisingh, L.R.: Statistics for the Utterly Confused. McGraw Hill, 2005,
352 p., ISBN 978-007-146-193-1
 Everitt, B. S.: The Cambridge (explanatory) dictionary of statistics.
Cambridge University Press, 2006, 442 p., ISBN 978-052-169-027-0
 Illowsky, B. - Dean, S. (2009, August 5). Collaborative Statistics.
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Moodle course by Martina Majorova at:

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