Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.
A statistician is someone who is particularly well-versed in the ways of thinking necessary for the successful application of statistical analysis. Such people have often gained experience through working in any of a wide number of fields. There is also a discipline called mathematical statistics that studies statistics mathematically.
The word statistics, when referring to the scientific discipline, is singular, as in "Statistics is an art." This should not be confused with the word statistic, referring to a quantity (such as mean or median) calculated from a set of data, whose plural is statistics ("this statistic seems wrong" or "these statistics are misleading").
Read more about Statistics: Scope, History, Overview, Specialized Disciplines, Statistical Computing, Misuse, Statistics Applied To Mathematics or The Arts
Famous quotes containing the word statistics:
“We already have the statistics for the future: the growth percentages of pollution, overpopulation, desertification. The future is already in place.”
—Günther Grass (b. 1927)
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination.”
—Andrew Lang (1844–1912)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)