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Statistics, in the modern sense of the word, began evolving in the 18th century in response to the novel needs of industrializing sovereign states.. In early times, the meaning was restricted to information about states, particularly demographics such as population.
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 statistic (singular) or sample statistic is any quantity computed from values in a sample which is considered for a statistical purpose. Statistical purposes include estimating a population parameter, describing a sample, or evaluating a hypothesis. The average (or mean) of sample values is a statistic. The term statistic is used both for the ...
Statistics is a field of inquiry that studies the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. It is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines , from the physical and social sciences to the humanities ; it is also used and misused for making informed decisions in all areas of business and government .
Statistical significance dates to the 18th century, in the work of John Arbuthnot and Pierre-Simon Laplace, who computed the p-value for the human sex ratio at birth, assuming a null hypothesis of equal probability of male and female births; see p-value § History for details.
The use of descriptive and summary statistics has an extensive history and, indeed, the simple tabulation of populations and of economic data was the first way the topic of statistics appeared. More recently, a collection of summarisation techniques has been formulated under the heading of exploratory data analysis : an example of such a ...
Absolute deviation in statistics is a metric that measures the overall difference between individual data points and a central value, typically the mean or median of a dataset. It is determined by taking the absolute value of the difference between each data point and the central value and then averaging these absolute differences. [ 4 ]
Official statistics provide a picture of a country or different phenomena through data, and images such as graph and maps. Statistical information covers different subject areas (economic, demographic, social etc.). It provides basic information for decision making, evaluations and assessments at different levels.