Descriptive Statisctics Torture numbers and they'll confess to anything.

~Gregg Easterbrook The study of statistics blends the rigor, calculations and deductive thinking of mathematics, the real-world examples and problems of the social sciences, the decision-making needs of business and medicine and the laboratory method and experimental procedures of the natural sciences. - The College Board, Advanced Placement Program, Teachers Guide AP Statistics Statistics can be made to prove anything - even the truth. ~Author Unknown Among leaders of industry, business, government and education, almost everyone agrees that some knowledge of statistics is necessary to be an informed citizen or a productive worker. Numbers are regularly used and misused to justify opinions on public policy. Quantitative information is the basis for decisionmaking in virtually every job within business and industry. Many academic programs at the college level include statistics as a requirement. - The College Board, Advanced Placement Program, Teachers Guide AP Statistics While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician. ~Arthur Conan Doyle The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. ~Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945 She may look at it because it has pictures This is what Florence Nightingale said about a book of statistics that she had sent to Queen Victoria Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. B. F. Skinner In ten years time you might have forgotten, for example, how the standard deviation of a set of data is calculated, but in everything you study at school there is some important understanding that can endure.please keep the following essential questions in mind and think about them as you work through this unit. You will be given a short writing assignment to do at the end of the unit, based on one of these questions (your choice). Guiding Question -

How does statistics impact positively on our lives?

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881, British Prime Minister). This is a very famous and controversial quote. Why can he say this? If youre not statistically-literate, youre vulnerable to manipulation by governments, corporations and the media. How could you defend or oppose this statement?

Learning Outcomes for this Unit

This is what youre expected to know, understand and be able to do by the end of this unit. Think about what youve already learned and tick boxes in the confidence log below to help you judge what you need to focus on in this unit (maybe everything, thats ok).

Learning outcome
Explains the concepts of population and sample Identifies qualitative and quantitative data Interprets frequency tables (grouped and ungrouped) Constructs frequency tables (grouped and ungrouped) Uses the terms mid-interval value, class/interval width, upper and lower class/interval boundaries Interprets frequency histograms Constructs frequency histograms Interprets cumulative frequency graphs Uses the terms quartiles to describe the distribution of a data set Uses a cumulative frequency graph to find quartiles, and median Finds and interprets these measures of central tendency: mean, median and mode (from a raw data set, a grouped or ungrouped frequency table or histogram) Finds and interprets these measures of dispersion: range, inter-quartile range, (from a raw data set, a table or cumulative frequency curve) Interprets box and whisker plots Constructs box and whisker plots Calculates standard deviation from the GDC and interprets its meaning. Uses the TI83 calculator to produce the statistical diagrams and measures mentioned above

Very confident

Confident but need to review it

Not confident