The Science of Life

This is an entry in the Basic Statistics Lecture Series which I have realized that I have failed to incorporate into the series so far, and I apologize for that.  This lecture is going to cover the basic calculations required for all of statistical analysis, on a fundamental level. When we collect statistical data, we typically collect it on a small part of the population as a whole.  The population is the entire group for which a sentiment holds true.  This small part of the population as a whole is called the sample of the population, or just sample for short.  The number of data points we collect -- the number of items in the sample -- is called the sample size, which is typically denoted by the letter n. In statistics, we typically calculate the arithmetic mean, which is the sum of all values divided by the sample size.  For the population as a whole, this is denoted by the greek letter μ (mu), and for a sample, it's denoted by x . The sample mean ...