A subject that has gained immense popularity in the last few decades is the subject of statistics. Any activity that is carried out in bulk needs a qualitative and quantitative look at it. Right from the business done by a firm to the population growth of the world, statistics plays a vital role in collecting, analyzing and interpreting data. Data here refers to numbers mostly.
Statistics is the core subject which, in a scientific manner, tells you how a certain activity has behaved over a period of time. It tells you what how successful or unsuccessful an activity has been in relation to its intended goals. Most importantly it attempts to predict, as closely as possible, future results.
Colleges and universities have emphasized on making statistics the main subject after years of it being taught as a topic in mathematics course. The reason for such a move a few decades ago was recognition and acceptance of how important the subject is in almost every branch of life, from health to economy.
Without analysis and inference, predictive knowledge is impossible. Thus, as a student of statistics, this branch needs special attention. In addition to classes and lectures, there are help websites which offer amazing insight and inference concepts and analysis homework help.
Understanding analysis and statistical inference
Now any one can see why such a subject, or rather a branch of mathematics, would be useful. Consider you run a bank. For the sake of business, it is absolutely vital you know the amount of money people have deposited in your bank over the months in a year. Not only that, you will need to figure out the customers who deposit higher sums of money than the regular customers. That group will be the high priority group. The bank will have to come up with special services for the group to keep them loyal to it.
The bank will have to collect data regarding the times of the year people withdraw or deposit most of their money. People generally withdraw most during festivities like the New Year or Christmas for reasons like spending or vacations. Knowing such trends would allow the bank to make decisions like introducing offers and rebates for more profits or increasing their customer base.
So it is clear that this process entails collecting data about customer transactions at the bank. Going through the huge amount of data with the aim of recognizing a pattern is what is called analysis. Finally, coming to a conclusion like “people withdraw most of their money during Christmas†is the inference. More technical definitions will be present in your inference concepts and analysis homework help you take from some useful websites.
What happens in a larger picture?
Now, this was a rather simplified explanation of how the branch of statistics works. It seems quite simple but is far from it. Since making inferences and conclusions is not just a simple matter of looking at graphs and charts. It is much more than that especially when the quantity of data is large.
It is a mathematical process that involves complex calculations. In fact, software have come up that tend to make this process easier. But without fundamental knowledge, it is impossible to make out heads or tails of such numbers. To make a proper statistical inference, one needs to be quite objective in approach.
Now obviously for a small bank with a small amount of customers, looking at all the data might be possible. But what about a bank with a huge amount of customers? Consider something like JPMorgan, or maybe the Bank of America.
Trying to recognize a pattern and coming to a conclusion is a far more difficult task when the quantity of data is so high. Or what about a company like General Motors which sells millions of cars around the world? Sitting and analyzing individual data points will be extremely difficult if not impossible. In such cases, analysts work with a “sample.â€
Concept of sample
A sample is a smaller population or a part of a data set that is a proper representative of a larger portion of the data. To know in which part of the year cars sell the most, trying to look all the car showrooms and dealerships in the country will be tedious and confusing. Therefore a company would rather select a smaller area and try and look at customer behavior patterns.
This narrows down the data set that needs to be studied, thereby decreasing the amount of work. If a sample is not selected, even collecting data would be impossible, let alone analyzing it. The sample, however, should be homogenous and representative of the total population. More characteristics need to be ensured for a sample and to learn about them, it is better to take some inference concepts and analysis homework help.
Various approaches
There are a lot of models when it comes to trying to make an inference after analyzing data. Model here means approach. What approach to take on depends on the kind of data involved. Estimation needs to be made on the kind of results a date yields after thorough analysis. Some of the types of estimation are:
- Point estimation –
A point estimate is normally made when data is rather small. A point estimation approach is also taken on in cases of large data but when thorough analysis has resulted in a highly accurate attempt to decipher a result. For instance, after analyzing the population figures of a country, an analyst says that population would increase by 1 million in the next year. This is a singular figure, 1 million, and is thus a point estimate.
- Interval estimation –
As the name suggests, here estimation is made via an interval. For example, after careful analysis over years, analysts claim that the age of contracting a certain disease is 45-52 years. This is an interval, and such an approach is taken when coming up with a singular data point is not feasible due to the scattering seen in such an interval.
- Hypothesis approach –
This is a model where a hypothesis like “people generally die of breast cancer within 10 years of diagnosis†is accepted or rejected. Of course, before such acceptance or rejection, a lot of analysis on the data available is carried out.
More such models and approaches are present. You can know more about them while taking some inference concepts and analysis homework help.
The above examples are highly simplified, and calculations involved in actual analysis are highly complicated. Figures of mean, standard deviation, variance, etc. are regularly dealt with. Each of these calculations tends to be a bit lengthy in nature, especially when the data is large.
Therefore inference concepts and analysis homework help are really useful when complex calculations get a bit difficult to handle. Of course understanding the subject is not very easy and takes a dedicated effort. A look at these websites will help you immensely in understanding the nature of the subject as well as the topic.