Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory and other mathematical concepts to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. [1] Specific mathematical techniques that are commonly used in statistics include mathematical analysis , linear algebra , stochastic analysis , differential equations , and ...
Referring to statistical significance does not necessarily mean that the overall result is significant in real world terms. For example, in a large study of a drug it may be shown that the drug has a statistically significant but very small beneficial effect, such that the drug is unlikely to help the patient noticeably.
A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. [1] There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statistics.
For example, the sample mean is an unbiased estimator of the population mean. This means that the expected value of the sample mean equals the true population mean. [1] A descriptive statistic is used to summarize the sample data. A test statistic is used in statistical hypothesis testing. A single statistic can be used for multiple purposes ...
Greek letters (e.g. θ, β) are commonly used to denote unknown parameters (population parameters). [3]A tilde (~) denotes "has the probability distribution of". Placing a hat, or caret (also known as a circumflex), over a true parameter denotes an estimator of it, e.g., ^ is an estimator for .
More generally, statistical models are part of the foundation of statistical inference. A statistical model is usually specified as a mathematical relationship between one or more random variables and other non-random variables. As such, a statistical model is "a formal representation of a theory" (Herman Adèr quoting Kenneth Bollen). [2]
Like the statistical mean and median, the mode is a way of expressing, in a (usually) single number, important information about a random variable or a population. The numerical value of the mode is the same as that of the mean and median in a normal distribution, and it may be very different in highly skewed distributions.
The mean and the standard deviation of a set of data are descriptive statistics usually reported together. In a certain sense, the standard deviation is a "natural" measure of statistical dispersion if the center of the data is measured about the mean. This is because the standard deviation from the mean is smaller than from any other point.