Statistics Meaning
/stəˈtɪs.tɪks/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounA discipline, principally within applied mathematics, concerned with the systematic study of the collection, presentation, analysis, and interpretation of data.
nounA systematic collection of data on measurements or observations, often related to demographic information such as population counts, incomes, population counts at different ages, etc.
Sentence Examples
The aviation expert analyzed the statistics in detail.
In these statistics Egypt is classed as an African nation.
These two sets of statistics are guaranteed to confuse the public.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
None
CEFR Practice Quiz
The professor taught a course on ____ to help students interpret data.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I am taking a course in ____ this semester to learn how to properly gather and analyze medical data.
Word Origin & History
From German Statistik, from New Latin statisticum (“of the state”) and Italian statista (“statesman, politician”), compare English statist. Statistik introduced by Gottfried Achenwall (1749), originally designated the analysis of data about the state.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"As for statistics, the foundations include, on any interpretation of which I have ever heard, the foundations of probability, as controversial a subject as one could name. As in other sciences, controversies over the foundations of statistics reflect themselves to some extent in everyday practice, nut not nearly so catastrophically as one might imagine.[…]It is hard to judge, however, to what extent the relative calm of modern statistics is due to its domination by a vigorous school relatively well agreed within itself about the foundations."
— 1972, Leonard J. Savage, The Foundations of Statistics, Dover, page 1:
"We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology, alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year."
— 2012 January 26, Robert L. Dorit, “Rereading Darwin”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 14 Nov 2012, page 23:
"Sufficient statistics for a given estimation problem are a collection of statistics or, equivalently, a collection of functions of the random sample, that summarize or represent all of the information in a random sample that is useful for estimating any #92;textbf#123;q#125;(#92;#33;#92;boldsymbol#92;Theta#92;#33;)."
— 1996, Ron C. Mittelhammer, Mathematical Statistics for Economics and Business, Springer, page 389:
"“Over the past month, the Department has held three separate meetings with the ACLU to receive feedback and engage the organization in the solutions,” the department said in a statement. “As a result of the meetings, the Department agrees that publishing FIO statistics going forward is necessary, and the Department is working toward personalizing interactions between officers and citizens.”"
— 2014 October 9, Marina Carver, “Study finds Boston police target African-Americans disproportionately”, in CNN:
Explore More B1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The professor taught a course on ____ to help students interpret data.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I am taking a course in ____ this semester to learn how to properly gather and analyze medical data.