Basic statistics
The word statistics is derived from the Latin word “status” or the Italian word ‘Statista’. Both of the
words mean ‘political state’ or ‘government’. In the past, the use of statistics was very restricted and
used to be applied only to state affairs. That is, for running government the information about land,
agriculture, commerce, and demographic characteristic of population and military ability used to be
gathered. Shakespeare used the word ‘statist’ in his drama Hamlet in 1602.
Gottfried Achenwall used the German word ‘statistik’ in 1749 to mean the data about sate or the
political science of different countries. With the passage of time and the development of technology,
this is the age of information or data.
Thus the science of dealing with data or extracting meaningful information has brought about the use
of statistics in almost every discipline and policy implication in a state or global affair. It is said that a
single day of our life cannot pass without the help of information technology and statistics in this
modern time.
There are numerous definitions of statistics; however, one of the most popular definitions is
“Statistics is a branch of science that deals with the collection, presentation, analysis, interpretation
and making inferences (prediction) from masses of data.”
To perform proper data analysis and interpretations, many primary concepts and terminologies
should be understood. The following sections describe such important terms.