Blind men and an elephant

Things aren’t always what we think!

Six blind men go to observe an elephant. One feels the side and thinks
the elephant is like a wall. One feels the tusk and thinks the elephant is a
like a spear. One touches the squirming trunk and thinks the elephant is
like a snake. One feels the knee and thinks the elephant is like a tree.
One touches the ear, and thinks the elephant is like a fan. One grasps the
tail and thinks it is like a rope.

They argue long and loud and though each was partly in the
right, all were in the wrong.
 Why is a physician held in much
higher esteem than a statistician?

A physician makes an analysis of a

complex illness whereas
a Statistician
makes you ill with a complex analysis
No Two things are
alike
An observed characteristic results in
a set of numbers

• Any natural phenomenon has a tendency to

vary around a value usually at the Center
• Values of the observed characteristic cluster
around this Central value
• A measure of such a tendency is called
Central Tendency
• Simply they are AVERAGES
 MEASURES OF CENTRAL
TENDENCIES

• In practice there are many measures available – like,

Arithmetic Mean (popularly known as average),
Median, Mode, Harmonic Mean, Geometric Mean etc.
• For natural phenomena the most used average is the
Arithmetic mean for its simplicity in computation and
understanding
• However, for specific situations, the suitability of an
average has to be verified.
 Arithmetic Mean
Sl. No Series 1 Series 2 Series 3
1
2
3
4
5
Total 500 500 500
Average 100 100 100
 Arithmetic Mean
Sl. No Series 1 Series 2 Series 3
1 100 99 1
2 100 103 2
3 100 98 3
4 100 99 4
5 100 101 490
Total 500 500 500
Average 100 100 100
Arithmetic Mean and Proficiency

Student A Student B
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Total 240 240
Average 80 80
Arithmetic Mean and Proficiency

Student A Student B
Test 1 100 60
Test 2 80 80
Test 3 60 100
Total 240 240
Average 80 80
 Breaking down big
numbers

Your numbers are characters in the story –

give them some personality
 Breaking down big
numbers
1.4m photos

x 86,400 seconds
“1.4 million photos are in a day
uploaded a second”
÷ 500 million
users

= 240 photos per

person per day

Realistic?
 Putting numbers in context
Numbers often need to be scaled
to be meaningful e.g. per person,
per passenger mile etc.

Tourist
info
centres
Hospitals
Putting numbers in context

“The implant has been used by around 1.4 million

women since it was introduced in 1999. In its 11
“…for
years of use, medicine every 1,000
regulators have recorded
women
584 pregnancies among using it, less
users”
than one will get
pregnant over a three-
year period”
 Percentages
Know the difference between a
percentage and a percentage point.

VAT increased to 20% on January

2011

This is a rise of 2.5 percentage points

not a rise of 2.5%
 Percentages
Percentages less than 1% are
difficult to interpret. Better to use “3
in every 10,000” than 0.03%

Also be careful with percentages

bigger than 100% - can be better to
use double, triple etc.
 UK smoking rate
1948 1970
26m smokers 25m smokers

65% 55%

“The smoking population shrank by 4 per cent”

“The smoking rate has declined 10 percentage points”

= 1 million non-smokers
= 1 million smokers
Did you hear about the Statistician
who had his head in an Oven and
his feet in a Bucket of Ice?

When asked how he felt,

he replied,

"On the average I feel just fine."

 DISPERSION
• As Averages alone are not sufficient to represent data there is
need to know the extent the values deviate from the Center
• If X1 is an observation and µ is the mean then (X1- µ) is a
deviation from the mean
• If we find sum of such deviations for all observations we get
ZERO
• Therefore these deviations are usually squared – (X1- µ)2
• The average of such squared deviations is called the variance.
• The positive square root of this variance is called the Standard
Deviation.
 Mean and Standard Deviation
• Any normal variable can be completely
explained by its Mean and Standard Deviation
• Most statistical results are under the assumption
of Normality of Data
• This assumption helps in building up models and
relationship among variables
• If normality fails, such data could be treated
suitably
Variation and
distributions
We often want to
summarise a
distribution of values
with one number – an
average.
But there are different
types of average:
mean, median and
mode.
 Averages
Average does not mean the same
thing as typical.
Different averages tell different
stories – say which you are using.
 Averages

Mode, Median, £377

£275 Mean, £463
 Averages
Bottom line:
Give an idea of the size and
shape of the spread around the
average.
Normal distribution

68.2%

95.4%
 Variables

Condensation
Meltability
All samples

Centered

Stickiness
Graininess
Scaling the Variables

Firmness
Cheese centered, Group:

Adhesiveness
Variables
Percentiles

Shape
Glossiness
Condensation

Standardized
3

-3

-6

Meltability

All samples
Stickiness
Graininess

Cheese standar d…, Group:

Firmness
Variables

Adhesiveness
Percentiles Shape
Glossiness
Condensation

-2

-4
Meltability
Stickiness
Graininess

All samples

Raw
Firmness
Adhesiveness

Cheese, Group:
Percentiles
Shape
Glossiness

0
 Applied Statistics

• 40 % Application knowledge
• 30 % Common sense
• 20 % Statistics
• 10 % Mathematics