What Is Statistics Anyway?

An Overview of the Statistical Perspective

Stats 10: Introduction to Statistical Reasoning

UCLA

All rights reserved, Michael Tsiang, 2017.

Michael Tsiang, 2017 1/13

 Outline

1 What Even Is Statistics

2 The Statistical Process

3 Course Overview

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 Statistics is Everywhere
Statistics arises in various disciplines and has everyday applications:
How does an economist predict future stock prices or returns
on investments? Statistics!
How does your insurance company decide what your premium
should be? Statistics!
How do medical researchers decide if a new medical treatment
is effective and/or safe? Statistics!
How does a meteorologist determine the chance of rain on a
given day? Statistics!
How does Netflix recommend movies/shows it thinks you will
like? Statistics!
How does a sports team decide who gets picked, cut, how good
a player is, how much money to pay them, etc.? Statistics!
What do all of these examples have in common?
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 Variation and Data
1 There is an inherent element of randomness (or chance) in
each situation: The same scenario could have possibly different
outcomes.
This leads to natural variation or variability.
Stock prices fluctuate constantly and unpredictably.
The same medical treatment will affect different individuals
differently (differences in efficacy or side effects).
(Side note: If the same scenario always has the same outcome,
the scenario is deterministic.)

2 The predictions/forecasts/conclusions are all based on data,

i.e., information/measurements/observations that is recorded
or collected.
Data often/usually does not give a complete picture of the
situation, but statistics gives us a way of making conclusions
while accounting for our uncertainty.
Michael Tsiang, 2017 4/13
 What even is Statistics?

Variation and data are the two major concepts underlying statistics.

Definition
Statistics is:
The study of collecting, analyzing, and making conclusions
from data.
A tool to understanding what data can (and cannot) tell us
about the world.
A systematic framework for quantifying uncertainty.

The power of statistics is not in its mathematical foundations, but

in its applications.

Michael Tsiang, 2017 5/13

 Outline

1 What Even Is Statistics

2 The Statistical Process

3 Course Overview

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 Overview of the Statistical Process
1 We usually start with a research question.
Example: Does this new medication help fight lung cancer?
2 What is the relevant population, i.e., the target group of
people or things of interest?
For this example, the population is everyone with lung cancer.
3 The population is usually too difficult to observe directly, so
we take a sample from the population. We then observe and
study the sample.
For this example, a sample could be a select group of lung
cancer patients.
4 Statistical inference: Based on what we see in the sample,
we can make conclusions about the population.
For this example, a conclusion could be that the medication is
helpful (e.g., it slows lung cancer progression by a certain rate).
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 Diagram of the Statistical Process

Sampling

'
Population Sample
(Too difficult to study directly)
p
Inference

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 Representative Samples

For the conclusions to be valid, our sample must be representative

of the population. A sample that is not representative is called a
biased sample.

For this example, a biased sample might consist of lung cancer

patients who are all at the same cancer stage, all the same gender,
or all diabetic. These patients (as a group) would not accurately
represent all people with lung cancer.

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 Simple Random Sampling
In general, it is very difficult to get a representative sample.

One way that should (but is not guaranteed) to give a

representative sample is simple random sampling (SRS):
1 Start with a sampling frame: a list of everyone (or
everything) in the population.
2 With the sampling frame, select a person (or thing) at random
one by one.

Properties of simple random sampling:

Every single person (or thing) in the population has an equal
chance of being selected.
Every possible sample has an equal chance of being selected.
Because of random chance, some samples selected may not be
representative of the population.
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 Sampling Is Hard

A sampling frame is often very difficult to obtain.

In this course, we will assume we are able to find a sample on which

we can collect data (information).

Whether we can assume that the sample is representative will

depend on context.

We will discuss different ways of collecting data in Chapter 1.

Michael Tsiang, 2017 11/13

 Outline

1 What Even Is Statistics

2 The Statistical Process

3 Course Overview

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 Course Overview

Descriptive Statistics Final Exam

Summarizing data into / Statistical Summarize data
a few summary values
8 Inference
O on a sample
Midterm 1

Sampling Find the

Distributions
The probability of probability of
observing certain observing our
summary values
O summary values

Midterm 2 Based on our

Probability
findings, we make
Distributions conclusions about
O
the population

 Probability 
Likelihood or chance of
observing certain outcomes

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