Table of Contents Table of Contents
Previous Page  5 / 762 Next Page
Basic version Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 5 / 762 Next Page
Page Background

Chapter 1: Introduction and Graphical Displays

5

Figure 1-1:

Breakdown of the subject of statistics

In order to deal with any aspect of the subject area of statistics we first must

gather information. As such,

data

must be collected from variables which

are used to describe an event or events or from variables which are used in

an experiment.

Definition: Data

Data are the values or measurements for variables which describe an event

or experiment.

Variables whose values are determined by chance are called

random

variables

. Random variables will be discussed in later chapters in this

e-book. Variables which are random or not can be classified into two broad

variable groups. These two variable groups are listed as

qualitative