1.1 What is statistics?
The word statistics is now commonplace in everyday conversation, but I wonder if you’ve ever stopped to consider what is meant by statistics.
Activity 1 Thinking about statistics
What does the word statistics mean to you? Take a moment to think about the word and your understanding of it. Write down a sentence or two that comprise your thoughts.
Comment
I wonder if your sentence/s involved the word data.
We have all been exposed to a great deal of data in the media, often in the form of tables and graphs. Frequently these are used to help illustrate a particular point about how a country or a political party is performing.
Data – singular or plural?
It is now widely accepted that the word data can be used when talking about a single item of information or a set of items of information. In this course, the word data will be used as both singular and plural as appropriate to the context.
It is generally considered the word statistics comes from the Latin status, meaning much the same as it does today, a position, place or arrangement (often in society). Statisticum (Latin) means ‘state affairs’ so perhaps this is why our thoughts tend to politics when we think of statistics.
Statistics (noun)
‘The systematic collection and arrangement of numerical facts or data of any kind; (also) the branch of science or mathematics concerned with the analysis and interpretation of numerical data and appropriate ways of gathering such data.’ (OED, 2024)
Sir John Sinclair (1754–1835), published Statistical Accounts of Scotland (21 vols., 1791–1799)
Becoming a member of parliament in the late 18th Century, ‘Agricultural Sir John’, as he was known, sought to bring together information about Scotland to ascertain the state of the country and learn from the past.
Sinclair’s use of the words ‘statistics’ and ‘statistical’ is thought have been one of the first in the English language.
In the singular, statistic, can be used to describe a value or measure that represents some aspect of a set of data e.g. the mean (average) height of students in a class.
In the next section you will look at how statistics are commonly presented in the classroom.