&

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Volumetric Glassware:

17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
Populations and samples
Populations
In statistics the term "population" has a slightly different meaning from the one given to it in
ordinary speech. It need not refer only to people or to animate creatures - the population of
Britain, for instance or the dog population of London. Statisticians also speak of a population of
objects, or events, or procedures, or observations, including such things as the quantity of lead in
urine, visits to the doctor, or surgical operations. A population is thus an aggregate of creatures,
things, cases and so on.

Although a statistician should clearly define the population he or she is dealing with, they may
not be able to enumerate it exactly. For instance, in ordinary usage the population of England
denotes the number of people within England's boundaries, perhaps as enumerated at a census.
But a physician might embark on a study to try to answer the question "What is the average
systolic blood pressure of Englishmen aged 40-59?" But who are the "Englishmen" referred to
here? Not all Englishmen live in England, and the social and genetic background of those that do
may vary. A surgeon may study the effects of two alternative operations for gastric ulcer. But
how old are the patients? What sex are they? How severe is their disease? Where do they live?
And so on. The reader needs precise information on such matters to draw valid inferences from
the sample that was studied to the population being considered. Statistics such as averages and
standard deviations, when taken from populations are referred to as population parameters. They
are often denoted by Greek letters: the population mean is denoted by μ(mu) and the standard
deviation denoted by ς (low case sigma)

Samples
A population commonly contains too many individuals to study conveniently, so an investigation
is often restricted to one or more samples drawn from it. A well chosen sample will contain most
of the information about a particular population parameter but the relation between the sample
and the population must be such as to allow true inferences to be made about a population from
that sample.

Consequently, the first important attribute of a sample is that every individual in the population
from which it is drawn must have a known non-zero chance of being included in it; a natural
suggestion is that these chances should be equal. We would like the choices to be made
independently; in other words, the choice of one subject will not affect the chance of other
subjects being chosen. To ensure this we make the choice by means of a process in which chance
alone operates, such as spinning a coin or, more usually, the use of a table of random numbers. A
limited table is given in the Table F (Appendix), and more extensive ones have been
published.(1-4) A sample so chosen is called a random sample.The word "random" does not
describe the sample as such but the way in which it is selected.

To summarize: your sample is the group of individuals who participate in your study, and your
population is the broader group of people to whom your results will apply. As an analogy, you
can think of your sample as an aquarium and your population as the ocean. Your sample is small

66
portion of a vaster ocean that you are attempting to understand. Properly distinguishing between
these two concepts will aid you as you navigate the methodological details of your dissertation.

A population is a collection of persons, objects or items of interest.

A sample is a portion of the whole and, if properly taken, is representative of

the whole.

Average, mean, median and mode

The term "average" usually encompasses several ways to measure what value best represents a
sample. There are various measurements that are used and at times the term and measurement
used depends on the situation.

A statistician or mathematician would use the terms mean and average to refer to the sum of all
values divided by the total number of values, what you have called the average. This especially
true if you have a list of numbers. In fact even in mathematics there are different "averages" or
"means" and this one is more properly called the arithmetic mean.

The quantity obtained by adding the largest and smallest values and dividing by 2, statisticians
call the midrange. There are times however that this is called the mean. For example the weather
office records the "mean daily temperature", which is the sum of the high temperature and the
low temperature divided by 2.

The median is the central point of a data set. To find the median, you would list all data points in
ascending order and simply pick the entry in the middle of that list.

If this is not enough there is another measure. The mode is the value that occurs most often.

For example, consider the following data points: 1,1,2,3,4

The mean or average is (1+1+2+3+4)/5 = 2.2

The median is "2" (the central value).
The mode is "1" (it occurs most often).
The midrange is (4+1)/2 = 2.5

Second example:
The terms average, mean, median and mode are commonly confused with each other
because they all describe ways to talk about sets of numbers. To look at how each
term works, let’s say that nine students took a quiz, and the scores were 91, 84, 56, 90,
70, 65, 90, 92, and 30.
When someone asks for the average of a group of numbers, they’re most likely asking
for the arithmetic mean, a synonymous term. An arithmetic mean is calculated by
adding several quantities together and dividing the sum by the number of quantities.

67
 For our example, we need to add the nine quiz scores together and then divide the sum
by nine. So, the rounded average, or mean, score is 74.
The median is another form of an average. It usually represents the middle number in
a given sequence of numbers when it’s ordered by rank. When the quiz scores are
listed from lowest to highest (or highest to lowest), we can see that the median, or
middle, score is 84.
The mode is the most frequent value in a set of data. For our test takers, the mode, or
most common, score is 90.

Range
The Range is the difference between the lowest and highest values.

Example: In {4, 6, 9, 3, 7} the lowest value is 3, and the highest is 9.

So the range is 9 − 3 = 6.

The Range Can Be Misleading

The range can sometimes be misleading when there are extremely high or low
values.

Example: In {8, 11, 5, 9, 7, 6, 3616}:

 the lowest value is 5,

 and the highest is 3616,

So the range is 3616 − 5 = 3611.

The single value of 3616 makes the range large, but most values are around 10.

So we may be better off using Interquartile Range or Standard Deviation .

Standard Deviation
Deviation just means how far from the normal

The Standard Deviation is a measure of how spread out numbers are.

Its symbol is σ (the greek letter sigma)

68
 The formula is easy: it is the square root of the Variance. So now you ask,
"What is the Variance?"

Variance
The Variance is defined as:

The average of the squared differences from the Mean.

To calculate the variance follow these steps:

 Work out the Mean (the simple average of the numbers)

 Then for each number: subtract the Mean and square the result (the squared
difference).
 Then work out the average of those squared differences.

Example
You and your friends have just measured the heights of your dogs (in
millimeters):

The heights (at the shoulders) are: 600mm, 470mm, 170mm, 430mm and
300mm.

Find out the Mean, the Variance, and the Standard Deviation.

Your first step is to find the Mean:

Answer:

Mean = (600 + 470 + 170 + 430 + 300)/5

= 1970/5

= 394

so the mean (average) height is 394 mm.

69
Now we calculate each dog's difference from the Mean:

o calculate the Variance, take each difference, square it, and then average the
result:

Variance
σ2 = {2062 + 762 + (−224)2 + 362 + (−94)2}/5
= (42436 + 5776 + 50176 + 1296 + 8836)/5
= 108520/5
= 21704

So the Variance is 21,704

And the Standard Deviation is just the square root of Variance, so:

Standard Deviation
σ = √21704
= 147.32...
= 147 (to the nearest mm)

And the good thing about the Standard Deviation is that it is useful. Now we
can show which heights are within one Standard Deviation (147mm) of the
Mean:

So, using the Standard Deviation we have a "standard" way of knowing what is
normal, and what is extra-large or extra-small.

70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Applications

95
96
97
98
Applications

99
100
101
102
Applications

103