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Statistics and statistical graphs
What are the terms used in Statistics
- Variables are the characteristics, or measurements, which describe objects, for example, the gender or the height of the people.
- Data collected as variables can be of different types:
- Categorical variables are just labels for the different categories, for example gender, blood types, eye colour, country of birth;
- Quantitative variables are variables which can be found by counting or measuring a quantity.
- Quantitative variables can be either:
- discrete (able to take only specific number values), for example number of people or number of trees in a paddock;
- continuous (taking any value), for example height, temperature, money.
- A collection of variables which describe the variation within a group (or collection) is termed a data set.
- A statistical population is all possible values of the group (for example a census).
- Generally we collect a random sample to make conclusions about the population.