Probability and Statistics

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
In any investigation, whether quantitative or qualitative, a decision has to be made. Before a decision can be made, conceive on how to deal with the information gathered. Thus, to give meaning to this information, statistical methods have to be employed.
STATISTICS DEFINED:
It

is a field of study which deals with mathematical group or groups of items Refers to a set of pertinent activities such as collection, presentation, analysis, and interpretation of quantitative data
COLLECTION OF DATA

-refers to the process of gathering numerical information Methods are: Interview Questionnaire Experiments
TABLES
Refers

to frequency distributions which may either be one-dimensional or two-dimensional Graphical presentation: Bar graphs Frequency polygon

Pie-graphs

ANALYSIS OF DATA Refers to the

activity of describing the properties or behavior of the possible correlation of different quantities or variables.
NATURE OF STATISTICS

Statistics has already grown into a field that is varied and extensive statistical investigations may be classified into two subareas: 1. Descriptive statistics 2. Inferential statistics DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS Refers to that field of statistics that include the method of collecting, classifying, graphing and averaging data with the objective or simply describing the properties or characteristics of the data on hand INFERENTIAL STATISTICS oDemands a somewhat higher degree of critical judgment and advanced mathematical models.

SAMPLE OF POPULATION
POPULATION SAMPLING

refers to the totality of all objects under study

N n= 2 1 + Ne

refers to the method of getting a small part from the population

SAMPLE
refers

to the small part that serves as the representatives of the population DIFFERENT SAMPLING TECHNIQUE Include random sampling, biased sampling, cluster and so on
where; N = is the population size e= is the margin of error n = is the sample size

ROUNDING OFF NUMBERS In any activity, whether business transactions or statistical inquiry, it is of utmost importance that after performing relevant computations, the figures are rounded off to a desired number of places with significant values. To round off a number to a desired approximate value, we shall consider the following rules. 1. If the first number of the portion to be dropped is less than 5, change all the digits that are to the right of the last retained digit to zero
SUMMATION
The

sum of a series of numbers can best be represented by using the sigma notation or the greek letter

The

sum of n observation represented by x1, x2, .xn, is usually written as x1+ x2+ xn or in sigma notation, the sum shall be written as

RULE 1