AP Statistics - Chapter 1 Intro

statistics

the science of data

data analysis

organizing, displaying, summarizing, and asking questions about data

individuals

objects described by a set of data
- may be people, animals, or things

variable

any characteristic of an individual, can take different values for different individuals
- ex: gender, grade, age, GPA

categorical variable

places an individual into one of several groups or categories
- ex: gender, marital status, could be zip code even though it's a number (you wouldn't find the average of several zip codes)

quantitative variable

takes numerical values for which it makes sense to find an average
- ex: age, income, height, travel time

distribution

tells us what values the variable takes and how often

inference

drawing conclusions that go beyond the data we have