Introductory Descriptive Statistics Lectures

Abstract

This polycope provides a comprehensive introduction to statistics, covering essential concepts and techniques. It begins by defining statistics and its types, introducing key terms like population, sample, parameter, and statistic. The polycop then delves into descriptive statistics, exploring methods for summarizing and visualizing both qualitative and quantitative data, including frequency distributions, histograms, and box plots.The polycope further explores measures of central tendency, such as the mean, median, and mode, as well as measures of variability, including variance, standard deviation, and interquartile range. It also introduces concepts like skewness and kurtosis to describe the shape of distributions.Correlation and regression analysis are covered to examine relationships between variables, while index numbers are discussed to measure changes in economic variables over time. The polycope concludes with a chapter on measures of concentration, focusing on the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient to assess income inequality.