Surface area

Surface area is the measure of how much exposed area a solid object has, expressed in
square units. Mathematical description of the surface area is considerably more involved
than the definition of arc length of a curve. For polyhedra (objects with flat polygonal
faces) the surface area is the sum of the areas of its faces. Smooth surfaces, such as a
sphere, are assigned surface area using their representation as parametric surfaces. This
definition of the surface area is based on methods of infinitesimal calculus and involves
partial derivatives and double integration.

General definition of surface area was sought by Henri Lebesgue and Hermann
Minkowski at the turn of the twentieth century. Their work led to the development of
geometric measure theory which studies various notions of surface area for irregular
objects of any dimension. An important example is the Minkowski content of a surface.

Definition of surface area

While areas of many simple surfaces have been known since antiquity, a rigorous
mathematical definition of area requires a lot of care. Surface area is an assignment

of a positive real number to a certain class of surfaces that satisfies several natural
requirements. The most fundamental property of the surface area is its additivity: the
area of the whole is the sum of the areas of the parts. More rigorously, if a surface S is a
union of finitely many pieces S1, …, Sr which do not overlap except at their boundaries
then

Surface areas of flat polygonal shapes must agree with their geometrically defined area.
Since surface area is a geometric notion, areas of congruent surfaces must be the same
and area must depend only on the shape of the surface, but not on its position and
orientation in space. This means that surface area is invariant under the group of
Euclidean motions. These properties uniquely characterize surface area for a wide class
of geometric surfaces called piecewise smooth. Such surfaces consist of finitely many
pieces that can be represented in the parametric form

with continuously differentiable function The area of an individual piece is defined by

the formula
Thus the area of SD is obtained by integrating the length of the normal vector to
the surface over the appropriate region D in the parametric uv plane. The area of the
whole surface is then obtained by adding together the areas of the pieces, using additivity
of surface area. The main formula can be specialized to different classes of surfaces,
giving, in particular, formulas for areas of graphs z = f(x,y) and surfaces of revolution.

One of the subtleties of surface area, as compared to arc length of curves, is that surface
area cannot be defined simply as the limit of areas of polyhedral shapes approximating a
given smooth surface. It was demonstrated by Hermann Schwarz that already for the
cylinder, different choices of approximating flat surfaces can lead to different limiting
values of the area.

Various approaches to general definition of surface area were developed in the late
nineteenth and the early twentieth century by Henri Lebesgue and Hermann Minkowski.
While for piecewise smooth surfaces there is a unique natural notion of surface area, if a
surface is very irregular, or rough, then it may not be possible to assign any area at all to
it. A typical example is given by a surface with spikes spread throughout in a dense
fashion. Many surfaces of this type occur in the theory of fractals. Extensions of the
notion of area which partially fulfill its function and may be defined even for very badly
irregular surfaces are studied in the geometric measure theory. A specific example of
such an extension is the Minkowski content of a surface.

Surface-area-to-volume ratio
The surface-area-to-volume ratio also called the surface-to-volume ratio and variously
denoted sa/vol or SA:V, is the amount of surface area per unit volume of an object or
collection of objects. The surface area to volume ratio is measured in units of inverse
distance. A cube with sides of length a will have a surface area of 6a2 and a volume of a3.

The surface to volume ratio for a cube is thus .

For a given shape, SA:V decreases linearly with increasing size. A cube 2 m on a side has
a ratio of 3 m−1, half that of a cube 1 m on a side. Conversely, preserving SA:V as size
increases requires changing to a less compact shape.

Physical chemistry

In involving a solid material, the surface area to volume ratio is an important factor for
the reactivity; that is, the rate at which the chemical reaction will proceed. Materials with
large surface area to volume ratios (e.g., very small diameter, or very porous or otherwise
not compact) react at much faster rates than monolithic materials, because more surface is
available to react. Examples include grain dust; while grain isn't typically flammable,
grain dust is explosive. Finely ground salt dissolves much more quickly than coarse salt.

High surface area to volume ratio provides a strong "driving force" to speed up
thermodynamic processes that minimize thermodynamic free energy.

Statistics
Statistics is the science of the collection, organization, and interpretation of data.[1][2] It
deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the
design of surveys and experiments.[1] Statistics is closely related to probability theory,
with which it is often grouped.

A statistician is someone who is particularly well versed in the ways of thinking

necessary for the successful application of statistical analysis. Such people have often
gained this experience through working in any of a wide number of fields. There is also a
discipline called mathematical statistics, which is concerned with the theoretical basis of
the subject.
The word statistics, when referring to the scientific discipline, is singular, as in "Statistics
is an art."[3] This should not be confused with the word statistic, referring to a quantity
(such as mean or median) calculated from a set of data,[4], whose plural is statistics, e.g.
"This statistic seems wrong." or "These statistics are misleading."

Scope

Statistics is considered by some to be a mathematical science pertaining to the collection,

analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data,[5] while others consider it
a branch of mathematics[6] concerned with collecting and interpreting data. Because of its
empirical roots and its focus on applications, statistics is usually considered to be a
distinct mathematical science rather than a branch of mathematics.[7][8]

Statisticians improve the quality of data with the design of experiments and survey
sampling. Statistics also provides tools for prediction and forecasting using data and
statistical models. Statistics is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines,
including natural and social sciences, government, and business.

Statistical methods can be used to summarize or describe a collection of data; this is

called descriptive statistics. This is useful in research, when communicating the results of
experiments. In addition, patterns in the data may be modeled in a way that accounts for
randomness and uncertainty in the observations, and are then used to draw inferences
about the process or population being studied; this is called inferential statistics.
Inference is a vital element of scientific advance, since it provides a prediction (based in
data) for where a theory logically leads. To further prove the guiding theory, these
predictions are tested as well, as part of the scientific method. If the inference holds true,
then the descriptive statistics of the new data increase the soundness of that hypothesis.
Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (a.k.a., predictive statistics) together
comprise applied statistics.[9]

[edit] History
Main article: History of statistics

Some scholars pinpoint the origin of statistics to 1663, with the publication of Natural
and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt.[10] Early
applications of statistical thinking revolved around the needs of states to base policy on
demographic and economic data, hence its stat- etymology. The scope of the discipline of
statistics broadened in the early 19th century to include the collection and analysis of data
in general. Today, statistics is widely employed in government, business, and the natural
and social sciences.

Its mathematical foundations were laid in the 17th century with the development of
probability theory by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. Probability theory arose from
the study of games of chance. The method of least squares was first described by Carl
Friedrich Gauss around 1794. The use of modern computers has expedited large-scale
statistical computation, and has also made possible new methods that are impractical to
perform manually.

Statistical methods
Experimental and observational studies

A common goal for a statistical research project is to investigate causality, and in

particular to draw a conclusion on the effect of changes in the values of predictors or
independent variables on dependent variables or response. There are two major types of
causal statistical studies: experimental studies and observational studies. In both types of
studies, the effect of differences of an independent variable (or variables) on the behavior
of the dependent variable are observed. The difference between the two types lies in how
the study is actually conducted. Each can be very effective. An experimental study
involves taking measurements of the system under study, manipulating the system, and
then taking additional measurements using the same procedure to determine if the
manipulation has modified the values of the measurements. In contrast, an observational
study does not involve experimental manipulation. Instead, data are gathered and
correlations between predictors and response are investigated.