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Chapter 1 Collecting and Describing Data

Many people are either dismissive of statistics (after all, you can prove anything with statistics, right?) or find the topic intimidating. However, a good understanding of statistics will help us to answer real-world questions such as the ones below.

  • Candidate X has 47% support from the voting public with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4%. Is it possible that candidate X is supported by a majority of voters?

  • Mark scored in the 84th percentile on his achievement test scores. How could you explain to Mark's parents what this means?

  • A nurse needs to compare the rate of absorption of a drug in men and women to detect any differences.

  • Sally needs to decide if the decline in sales in her small business is significant, or if it just a temporary fluctuation.

As answering any of these questions involves working with data, we begin our study of statistics with an examination of data and data collection.