Abstract
You may feel that the title of this chapter should be, ‘What are statistics?’ indicating the usual meaning of statistics as numerical facts or numbers. So, for example, the unemployment statistics are published monthly giving the number of people who have received unemployment benefit during the month. However, in the title of this chapter the singular noun’ statistics’ is used to mean the science of collecting and analysing data where the plural noun ‘data’ means numerical or non-numerical facts or information.
Authors... have obscured their works in a cloud of figures and calculation: the reader must have no small portion of phlegm and resolution to follow them throughout with attention: they often tax the memory and patience with a numerical superfluity, even to a nuisance.
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© 1989 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Rees, D.G. (1989). What is statistics?. In: Essential Statistics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7260-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7260-6_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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