What is/are STATISTICS? What IS…? – Statistics (singular) IS a way of reasoning, along with tools & methods, designed to help understand the world What ARE…? – statistics (plural) ARE calculations made from data – So, what ARE data ? ( datum is the singular form ) data are values along with context – observations, counts, measurements, responses

Word Association Let’s try to sum up each field in one word… Psychology Economics Biology Anthropology thinking (why we think what we think) money (flow, purpose, etc.) life who? History Philosophy Engineering Accounting STATISTICS what, where, and when? why? how? how much? VARIATION

Five W’s of Data Who What When Where Why (How) Without these, there is NO data Name# TicketsDestinationDeparting Eddie Money2ParadiseTonight

Who Case – an individual about whom or which (if not people) we have data – these are essentially the rows of a data table, which may also be referred to as records Respondents – answer surveys Subjects/Participants or Experimental Units – those on whom we experiment

What & Why Variables – hold information about same characteristic for multiple cases – CATEGORICAL Names categories & answers questions about how cases fall into those categories – QUANTITATIVE must have UNITS & answers questions about quantity of what is measured – (Ordinal) report value w/o natural units (i.e. rate on a scale of 1-10…) be careful how you treat these When labeling a variable, always think about the question you want it to answer