Bio 180

• Statistics - set of numerical data
• Science of Statistics - deals with the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data
• Validity - “will this study help answer the research question”
• Analysis - “what analysis and how should this be interpreted and reported”
• Efficiency - “Is the experiment the correct size making best use of resources”
• False Analogy - a comparison or analogy that is technically valid but that has little or no practical meaning. Implies that a comparison has been designed to be misleading
• Biased labeling - misleading labels on a graph 
• Biased samples - poor quality sample such as answers to leading questions 
• Leading question: How short are you

  Loaded question: Where do you enjoy drinking beer

  Double-barred questions: How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the pay and work benefits of your current job?

  Absolutes in questions: Do you always eat breakfast?
• Cognitive Biases - misinterpretation of numbers to due to flawed logic 
• Data Dredging - looking for patterns of data using brute force methods that try a large number of statistical models until matches are found 
• Overcomplexity - graph and data visualizations that are too complex to be interpreted by your audience. This may prevent data from being challenged and validated.
• Overfitting - testing too many theories against data such that random patterns are sure to be found
• Prosecutors fallacy - general term for an invalid interpretation of a valid statistics 
• Significance - basing analysis on a statistically insignificant number of samples
• Tyranny of Averages - term for overuse of averages in statistical analysis and decision making. refers to a situation in which an average is relatively meaningless due to the shape of data distribution
• Garbage in - garbage out - observation that processes, procedures, and technologies require meaningful inpt to produce a meaningful result
• Statistics - refer to procedures and techniques used in the collection
• Descriptive statistics - concerned with the collection, description, and analysis of a set of data without drawing conclusions or inferences about a larger set 
• Inferential Statistics - concerned with making predictions or inferences about a larger set of data using only the information gathered from a subset of this larger set
• Statistical Theory of Mathematical Statistics - deals with the development and exposition of theories that serve as bases of statistical methods
• Dot plot - consists of a number line and dots / points positioned above the number line. 
• 2 ways to summarize data:

  1. Graphing
  2. Using numbers - finding an average 
• Descriptive statistics - organizing and summarizing data
• Statistical Inference - uses probability to determine how confident we can be that our conclusions are correct 
• Effective interpretation of data / Inference - based on good procedures for producing data and thoughtful examination of the data 
• Probability - mathematical tool used to study randomness 

  • deals with the chance of an event occurring
• Karl Pearson - english statistician “Stastics is the grammar of Science”

  Ernest Rutherford - if your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.
• Population


  Collection of persons, things, objects under study, collection of all the elements under consideration in a statistical study
• Sample


  Selection in a population, part or subset of the population from which the information is collected
• 
  

  Sampling - Select a portion of the larger population and study that portion to gain information about the population
• Statistics


  Numbers that represent a property of the sample
• Parameter


  Numerical characteristics of a population
• Data


  Collection of observations
• Observation


  Numerical recording of information on a variable
• Measurement


  Process of determining the value or label of a particular variable for a particular experiment or sampling unit
• Experimental / sampling unit


  Individual or object on which a variable is measured
• Parameter - numerical characteristic of the whole population that can be estimated by a statistic 
• Variable - characteristic or measurement that can be determined for each member of a population, characteristic or attribute of persons or objects which can assume different values or labels for different persons or objects under consideration
• Data - actual values of the variable, may be words or numbers

  Datum - single value