Preface

This script is prepared for the course Essentials of Statistics / Statistics I taught at Gdańsk University of Technology. It was created using the bookdown package, which is part of the R statistical environment.

Statistics as the Science of Data

Statistics is the science of data: how they are collected, organized, analyzed, interpreted, presented, and how conclusions are drawn from them.

Branches of Statistics

Statistics is commonly divided into two main branches:

Descriptive statistics focuses on collecting, summarizing, and presenting data.
Inferential statistics (sometimes referred to as “mathematical statistics”) involves drawing conclusions and/or making decisions about processes or populations based on sample data. It makes use of probability theory.