Chapter 2 What is statistics?!

This is actually quite a difficult question, and pretty much every textbook on statistics provides a slightly different answer. So instead of trying to come up with yet another definition, let’s have a look at what other people have said:

Statistics is a branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data.1

“…in spite of all this variation, we are aware that there are useful relationships, structures, and theories that can be uncovered by looking at the data – finding these principles – .”2

“Statistics is a bit like sticking your finger into revolving blade fans – sometimes it hurts but it gives you the power to answer interesting questions.”3

“Modern Statistics, like telescopes, microscopes, X-rays, radar, and medical scans, enables us to see things invisible to the naked eye. Modern statistics enables us to see through the mists and confusion of the world about us, to grasp the underlying reality.”4

Admittedly, that last quote may sound a bit like an over-the-top TV add, but when we look at the table of contents from the inaugural 2014 issue of the Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application we can find the following articles:

  • The Role of Statistics in the Discovery of a Higgs Boson
  • Brain Imaging Analysis
  • Statistics and Climate
  • Statistical Evaluation of Forensic DNA Profile Evidence
  • Statistics and Quantitative Risk Management for Banking and Insurance
  • Using League Table Rankings in Public Policy Formation: Statistical Issues
  • Statistical Ecology
  • Estimating the Number of Species in Microbial Diversity Studies
  • Dynamic Treatment Regimes
  • Statistics and Related Topics in Single-Molecule Biophysics
  • Next-Generation Statistical Genetics: Modeling, Penalization, and Optimization in High-Dimensional Data

So it seems that you can indeed do very cool things with statistics these days. Actually, in the current “data deluge”, it’s hard to find an aspect of modern life where statistics does not have an impact! As John Tukey5 is reported to have said:

“The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone’s back yard.”

Given its huge impact on all scientific disciplines, it’s therefore time that statistics gets rid of the “historical baggage of tedium”6. Let’s dig in!

  1. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Statistics,” (accessed Januar 04, 2018), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics.}↩

  2. adapted from Wild, C.J. & Seber, G.A.F. (2000): Chance Encounters – A First Course in Data Analysis and Inference, John Wiley & Sons, p. 1,2.↩

  3. Field, A., Miles, J., and Field, Z. (2012): Discovering Statistics Using R, SAGE, p. 2.↩

  4. Hand, D.J. (2008), Statistics – A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Universtiy Press, p. 2.↩

  5. Tukey was a famous statistician, he is the guy who in the 1970s invented the box plot! Another fun fact: he was also active in the early days of computer design and coined the term “bit”.↩

  6. another quote from David Hand: Hand, D.J. (2009): Modern Statistics: the myth and the magic, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, pp. 287–306.↩