Introduction

Statistics is almost as old as man himself. In ancient time kings and rulers employ statistics to harness their military strength, taxation, agricultural production, economic strength, etc. In our day, statistics is very useful in many fields and institutions; government use statistics to make decisions regarding the state. Businesses, individuals, research fields, employ statistics in decision making. Statistics is a very useful tool in decision making, it provides trends and patterns from data to learn from. Data is the lifeline of statistics; without data there won't be statistics. The birth of statistics has birthed the development of other fields of enquiry; fields like data science, predictive modelling, etc. A working knowledge of statistics is a must-have skill to pursue a career in these fields. It is undeniable that statistics has contributed immensely to the world of quantitatives and analytics.

What is Statistics

Statistics has been defined over time by different authors, each having similar or divergent view about the field of study. According to the old definition statistics is derived from two words; Status derived from Latin meaning Stateman, and Statista Italian, meaning Political state. In 16th and 17th Century, statistics is said to be a science that teaches the political arrangement of a modern state in a known world. As at this time the application of statistics was limited to rulers and kings who needed information on agriculture, taxation, military strength, etc of it territory.

Modern definition of statistics

Statistics is defined by Allan Bluman as a science for conducting studies to collect, organize, summarize, analyze, and draw conclusion from data.

Gerald Keller defined statistics as a way to get information from data.

According to Awoyokun, statistics is a technique by which data are collected, organized, summarized, analyzed, and presented for the purpose of decision making.

Adebayo defined statistics as a scientific procedure that deals with the theoretical and methods for collecting data, organizing data, summarizing data, analyzing data, interpreting data, and the use of data . He stressed the importance of knowing what the data is used for.

Adam and Johnson defined statistics as any numerical information that can be used to to assess consequences.

Statistics is a way of bringing data into life through the use of all the necessary means of doing so. It involves putting data into action.

Branches of Statistics

There are two main branches of statistics; descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics.

Descriptive statistics is a method of organizing, summarizing, and presenting data in a convienient and informative way. It is a branch of statistics that involves the use of tables, graphs, charts, etc to summarize data.

Inferential statistics involves methods used to draw conclusions or inferences about characteristics of a population based on the sample of the population. It involves making generalization about a population from a study on the sample data of that population.