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Statistical Inference. “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” (H.G. Wells, 1946)
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Statistical Inference • “Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” (H.G. Wells, 1946) • “There are three kinds of lies: white lies, which are justifiable; common lies, which have no justification; and statistics.” (Benjamin Disraeli) • “Statistics is no substitute for good judgment.” (unknown)
Statistical Inference • Suppose – • A mechanical engineer is considering the use of a new composite material in the design of a vehicle suspension system and needs to know how the material will react under a variety of conditions (heat, cold, vibration, etc.) • An electrical engineer has designed a radar navigation system to be used in high performance aircraft and needs to be able to validate performance in flight. • An industrial engineer needs to validate the effect of a new roofing product on installation speed. • A motorist must decide whether to drive through a long stretch of flooded road after being assured that the average depth is only 6 inches.
Statistical Inference • What do all of these situations have in common? • How can we address the uncertainty involved in decision making? • a priori • a posteriori
Probability • A mathematical means of determining how likely an event is to occur. • Classical (a priori): Given N equally likely outcomes, the probability of an event A is given by, • where n is the number of different ways A can occur. • Empirical (a posteriori): If an experiment is repeated M times and the event A occurs mA times, then the probability of event A is defined as,
The Role of Probability in Statistics • In statistical inference, we want to make general statements about the population based on measurements taken from a sample. • How will all suspension systems produced with the new composite behave? • How will the radar navigation system perform in all aircraft? • What speed improvements will we obtain for all roofing applications using the new product? • To answer these questions, we ___________ from the population and hope to generalize the results.
Observations & Statistical Inference • Example, • An experiment is designed to determine how long it takes to install a roof using a new product. • Experiment • Design • Result: t = 2.32 sec/ft2, P = 0.023 • p – value:
Descriptive Statistics • Numerical values that help to characterize the nature of data for the experimenter. • Example: The absolute error in the readings from a radar navigation system was measured with the following results: • the sample mean, x = _________________________ • the sample median, x = _____________ 17 22 39 31 28 52 147 ~