STATISTICS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does statistics mean? 

• STATISTICS (noun)
  The noun STATISTICS has 1 sense:

1. a branch of applied mathematics concerned with the collection and interpretation of quantitative data and the use of probability theory to estimate population parameters

  Familiarity information: STATISTICS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STATISTICS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A branch of applied mathematics concerned with the collection and interpretation of quantitative data and the use of probability theory to estimate population parameters

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("statistics" is a kind of...):

applied math; applied mathematics (the branches of mathematics that are involved in the study of the physical or biological or sociological world)

Meronyms (parts of "statistics"):

statistical method; statistical procedure (a method of analyzing or representing statistical data; a procedure for calculating a statistic)

Domain member category:

sampling ((statistics) the selection of a suitable sample for study)

distribution; statistical distribution ((statistics) an arrangement of values of a variable showing their observed or theoretical frequency of occurrence)

centile; percentile ((statistics) any of the 99 numbered points that divide an ordered set of scores into 100 parts each of which contains one-hundredth of the total)

decile ((statistics) any of nine points that divided a distribution of ranked scores into equal intervals where each interval contains one-tenth of the scores)

quartile ((statistics) any of three points that divide an ordered distribution into four parts each containing one quarter of the scores)

cross section (a sample meant to be representative of a whole population)

grab sample (a single sample or measurement taken at a specific time or over as short a period as feasible)

random sample (a sample grabbed at random)

experimental variable; independent variable ((statistics) a variable whose values are independent of changes in the values of other variables)

degree of freedom ((statistics) an unrestricted variable in a frequency distribution)

dependent variable ((statistics) a variable in a logical or mathematical expression whose value depends on the independent variable)

predictor variable (a variable that can be used to predict the value of another variable (as in statistical regression))

Bernoulli's law; law of large numbers ((statistics) law stating that a large number of items taken at random from a population will (on the average) have the population statistics)

Bayes' theorem ((statistics) a theorem describing how the conditional probability of a set of possible causes for a given observed event can be computed from knowledge of the probability of each cause and the conditional probability of the outcome of each cause)

Bayes' postulate ((statistics) the difficulty of applying Bayes' theorem is that the probabilities of the different causes are seldom known, in which case it may be postulated that they are all equal (sometimes known as postulating the equidistribution of ignorance))

statistical method; statistical procedure (a method of analyzing or representing statistical data; a procedure for calculating a statistic)

least squares; method of least squares (a method of fitting a curve to data points so as to minimize the sum of the squares of the distances of the points from the curve)

multivariate analysis (a generic term for any statistical technique used to analyze data from more than one variable)

statistic (a datum that can be represented numerically)

average; norm (a statistic describing the location of a distribution)

demographic (a statistic characterizing human populations (or segments of human populations broken down by age or sex or income etc.))

deviation (the difference between an observed value and the expected value of a variable or function)

moment (the n-th moment of a distribution is the expected value of the n-th power of the deviations from a fixed value)

distribution free statistic; nonparametric statistic (a statistic computed without knowledge of the form or the parameters of the distribution from which observations are drawn)

parametric statistic (any statistic computed by procedures that assume the data were drawn from a particular distribution)

outlier (an extreme deviation from the mean)

mean deviation; mean deviation from the mean (the arithmetic mean of the absolute values of deviations from the mean of a distribution)

modal value; mode (the most frequent value of a random variable)

median; median value (the number midway between the two middle numbers in a series containing an even or odd number of items)

mean; mean value (an average of n numbers computed by adding some function of the numbers and dividing by some function of n)

arithmetic mean; expectation; expected value; first moment (the sum of the values of a random variable divided by the number of values)

geometric mean (the mean of n numbers expressed as the n-th root of their product)

harmonic mean (the mean of n numbers expressed as the reciprocal of the arithmetic mean of the reciprocals of the numbers)

second moment (the expected value of the square of the deviations of a random variable from the point of origin)

variance (the second moment around the mean; the expected value of the square of the deviations of a random variable from its mean value)

standard deviation (the square root of the variance)

covariance ((statistics) the mean value of the product of the deviations of two variates from their respective means)

frequency distribution (a distribution of observed frequencies of occurrence of the values of a variable)

Gaussian distribution; normal distribution (a theoretical distribution with finite mean and variance)

Poisson distribution (a theoretical distribution that is a good approximation to the binomial distribution when the probability is small and the number of trials is large)

bell-shaped curve; Gaussian curve; Gaussian shape; normal curve (a symmetrical curve representing the normal distribution)

population; universe ((statistics) the entire aggregation of items from which samples can be drawn)

subpopulation (a population that is part of a larger population)

sample; sample distribution; sampling (items selected at random from a population and used to test hypotheses about the population)

random sample (a sample in which every element in the population has an equal chance of being selected)

proportional sample; representative sample; stratified sample (the population is divided into strata and a random sample is taken from each stratum)

regression; regression toward the mean; simple regression; statistical regression (the relation between selected values of x and observed values of y (from which the most probable value of y can be predicted for any value of x))

multiple correlation; multiple regression (a statistical technique that predicts values of one variable on the basis of two or more other variables)

multicollinearity (a case of multiple regression in which the predictor variables are themselves highly correlated)

regression analysis (the use of regression to make quantitative predictions of one variable from the values of another)

regression equation; regression of y on x (the equation representing the relation between selected values of one variable (x) and observed values of the other (y); it permits the prediction of the most probable values of y)

regression coefficient (when the regression line is linear (y = ax + b) the regression coefficient is the constant (a) that represents the rate of change of one variable (y) as a function of changes in the other (x); it is the slope of the regression line)

linear regression; rectilinear regression (the relation between variables when the regression equation is linear: e.g., y = ax + b)

curvilinear regression (the relation between variables when the regression equation is nonlinear (quadratic or higher order))

regression curve; regression line (a smooth curve fitted to the set of paired data in regression analysis; for linear regression the curve is a straight line)

time series (a series of values of a variable at successive times)

vital statistics (data relating to births and deaths and health and diseases and marriages)

correlational analysis (the use of statistical correlation to evaluate the strength of the relations between variables)

correlation matrix (a matrix giving the correlations between all pairs of data sets)

factor analysis (any of several methods for reducing correlational data to a smaller number of dimensions or factors; beginning with a correlation matrix a small number of components or factors are extracted that are regarded as the basic variables that account for the interrelations observed in the data)

analysis of variance; ANOVA (a statistical method for making simultaneous comparisons between two or more means; a statistical method that yields values that can be tested to determine whether a significant relation exists between variables)

correlation table (a two-way tabulation of the relations between correlates; row headings are the scores on one variable and column headings are the scores on the second variables and a cell shows how many times the score on that row was associated with the score in that column)

curvilinear correlation; nonlinear correlation; skew correlation (any correlation in which the rates of change of the variables is not constant)

partial correlation (a correlation between two variables when the effects of one or more related variables are removed)

first-order correlation (a partial correlation in which the effects of only one variable are removed (held constant))

coefficient of correlation; correlation; correlation coefficient (a statistic representing how closely two variables co-vary; it can vary from -1 (perfect negative correlation) through 0 (no correlation) to +1 (perfect positive correlation))

covariation ((statistics) correlated variation)

direct correlation; positive correlation (a correlation in which large values of one variable are associated with large values of the other and small with small; the correlation coefficient is between 0 and +1)

indirect correlation; negative correlation (a correlation in which large values of one variable are associated with small values of the other; the correlation coefficient is between 0 and -1)

Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient; product-moment correlation coefficient (the most commonly used method of computing a correlation coefficient between variables that are linearly related)

multiple correlation coefficient (an estimate of the combined influence of two or more variables on the observed (dependent) variable)

biserial correlation; biserial correlation coefficient (a correlation coefficient in which one variable is many-valued and the other is dichotomous)

rank-difference correlation; rank-difference correlation coefficient; rank-order correlation; rank-order correlation coefficient (the most commonly used method of computing a correlation coefficient between the ranks of scores on two variables)

Kendall test (any of several nonparametric measures of correlation (used when the assumptions of standard correlational analysis are not met))

Kendall partial rank correlation (a nonparametric measure of partial correlation)

coefficient of concordance (a coefficient of agreement (concordance) between different sets of rank orderings of the same set of things)

Kendall's tau; Kendall rank correlation; tau coefficient of correlation (a nonparametric measure of the agreement between two rankings)

fourfold point correlation; phi coefficient; phi correlation (an index of the relation between any two sets of scores that can both be represented on ordered binary dimensions (e.g., male-female))

chance-half correlation; split-half correlation (a correlation coefficient calculated between scores on two halves of a test; taken as an indication of the reliability of the test)

tetrachoric correlation; tetrachoric correlation coefficient (a correlation coefficient computed for two normally distributed variables that are both expressed as a dichotomy)

spurious correlation (a correlation between two variables (e.g., between the number of electric motors in the home and grades at school) that does not result from any direct relation between them (buying electric motors will not raise grades) but from their relation to other variables)

Bernoulli distribution; binomial distribution (a theoretical distribution of the number of successes in a finite set of independent trials with a constant probability of success)

binomial theorem (a theorem giving the expansion of a binomial raised to a given power)

probability theory; theory of probability (the branch of applied mathematics that deals with probabilities)

information theory ((computer science) a statistical theory dealing with the limits and efficiency of information processing)

actuary; statistician (someone versed in the collection and interpretation of numerical data (especially someone who uses statistics to calculate insurance premiums))

weight; weighting ((statistics) a coefficient assigned to elements of a frequency distribution in order to represent their relative importance)

co-vary (vary in the same time period (of two random variables))

bimodal (of a distribution; having or occurring with two modes)

unimodal (having a single mode)

average; mean (approximating the statistical norm or average or expected value)

average; median (relating to or constituting the middle value of an ordered set of values (or the average of the middle two in a set with an even number of values))

average; modal (relating to or constituting the most frequent value in a distribution)

subnormal (below normal or average)

supernormal (exceeding the normal or average)

ergodic (positive recurrent aperiodic state of stochastic systems; tending in probability to a limiting form that is independent of the initial conditions)

stochastic (being or having a random variable)

significant (too closely correlated to be attributed to chance and therefore indicating a systematic relation)

nonsignificant (attributable to chance)

multivariate (pertaining to any procedure involving two or more variables)

nonparametric (not involving an estimation of the parameters of a statistic)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "statistics"):

correlation; correlational statistics (a statistical relation between two or more variables such that systematic changes in the value of one variable are accompanied by systematic changes in the other)

nonparametric statistics (the branch of statistics dealing with variables without making assumptions about the form or the parameters of their distribution)

biometrics; biometry; biostatistics (a branch of biology that studies biological phenomena and observations by means of statistical analysis)

Derivation:

statistical (of or relating to statistics)

statistician (someone versed in the collection and interpretation of numerical data (especially someone who uses statistics to calculate insurance premiums))

statistician (a mathematician who specializes in statistics)

 Context examples 

The mosquito-borne illness killed over 400,000 in 2015, according the most recent statistics from the World Health Organization.

(The Dog's Nose Knows Malaria, Kevin Enochs/VOA)

These can consist of the information stored in the genetic code, but also experimental results from various sources, patient statistics, and scientific literature.

(Bioinformatics, NCI Thesaurus)

Health statistics are numbers about some aspect of health.

(Health Statistics, NIH)

A statistic which assigns a single number to several individual statistics in order to quantify trends and evaluate a value or quantity as compared with a standard or a base value.

(Index Value, NCI Thesaurus)

A part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the NCHS is the primary Federal organization responsible for the collection, analyses, and dissemination of health statistics.

(National Center for Health Statistics, NCI Thesaurus)

In Brazil, statistics reveal that a baby dies every 30 seconds from complications arising from a preterm birth.

(Early birth main cause of child death in Brazil, Agência Brasil)

Epidemiological methods involve sophisticated statistics and higher mathematics.

(Epidemiological Method, NCI Thesaurus)

Ethnic origin has become a popular classification in statistics, where the concept of race has been largely discarded.

(Ethnic Origin, NCI Thesaurus)

Despite compelling statistics we still do not understand biochemically why heart defects are so prevalent.

(NFAT Pathway, NCI Thesaurus/BIOCARTA)

Algorithm used in statistics for finding maximum likelihood estimates of parameters in probabilistic models, where the model depends on unobserved latent (inferred) variables.

(Expectation Maximization Algorithm, NCI Thesaurus)