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Essay about Statistics in Sports

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Statistics is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. It is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines, from the physical and social sciences to the humanities. Statistics are also used for making informed decisions – and misused for other reasons – in all areas of business and government. Statistical methods can be used to summarize or describe a collection of data; this is called descriptive statistics. In addition, patterns in the data may be modeled in a way that accounts for randomness and uncertainty in the observations, and then used to draw inferences about the process or population being studied; this is called inferential statistics. Both …show more content…

Statistical dispersion is measured by a number system. The measure would be zero, if all the data were the same. As the data varies, the measurement number increases. There are two purposes to organizing this data. The first is to show how different units seem similar, by choosing the proper statistic, or measurement. This is called central tendency. The second is to choose another statistic that shows how they differ. This is known as statistical variability. The most commonly used statistics are the mean (average), median (middle or half), and mode (most frequent data). After the data is collected, classified, summarized, and presented, then it is possible to move on to inferential statistics if there is enough data to draw a conclusion. Statistical inference is the second part of statistics. Statistical inference uses the data that was gathered and organized by descriptive statistics in order to make a logical inference or conclusion. There are two branches of inferential statistics: Bayesian inference and frequency probability. Bayesian inference uses the scientific method to increase the probability that a hypothesis or theorem might be true by presenting factual information. By collecting evidence, the credibility of a hypothesis can change greatly. Evidence can be collected to prove, or disprove the hypothesis. A hypothesis that has been supported by enough evidence should be accepted as true, and a hypothesis that has been rejected by enough evidence

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