Applied Statistics and Probability for Engineers Lecture: 1

Chapter One Time: 2 hrs

Introduction
An overview of Statistics
What is statistics science?
Statistics: The science that deals with collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and drawing
conclusions from data in order to make decisions, solve problems, and design products
and processes.

Why study statistics?

• To make better decision for an uncertain environment.
• To learn how to collect, present, interpret and analyse data.
Key terms:

• Descriptive Statistics: it means Organizing and summarizing data into two ways
graphing such as the construction of histograms, boxplots, and scatter plots and by
using numbers (for example, means, standard deviations, and correlation
coefficients) without drawing any conclusion or inference about a large group.
• Inferential statistics: it is technique deals with the measurements that obtained
from the sample and then generalized to a population. It usually refers to the
conclusion from a hypothesis test or an interval estimate (using sample).

• Population: in Statistics, the population means Any finite or infinite collection of

individual units or parts, people, things, or objects under study.

Example: we might select a sample of last year’s engineering graduates to obtain

feedback about the quality of the engineering curricula.

• Finite Population: it is possible to count its individuals. It may also be called

a countable population. For example, the number of vehicles crossing a
bridge every day and the number of words in a book.

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 • Infinite population: it is not possible to count the units contained in the
population. Such a population is called infinite or uncountable.

Example:

1) Let us suppose that we want to examine whether a coin is fair or not. We shall toss it
a very large number of times to observe the number of heads. All the tosses will make
an infinite or uncountable infinite population.

2) Another example, the number of germs in the body of a sick patient is perhaps
something which is uncountable.

For Example: The population consisting of all individuals who received a B.S. in
engineering during the most recent academic year.

• Sample: is a subset of a population, containing the objects or outcomes that are

observed. It is selected randomly to represent infinite or large finite measurements
populations.
• Random Sample: sample is said to be random if it is selected in such a way so
that every possible sample has the same probability of being selected.
• Data: are the result of sampling from a population.
• Parameter : is a number that is a property of the population.
• A variable: is any characteristic whose value may change from one object to
another in the population. We shall initially denote variables by lowercase
letters from the end of English alphabet. Examples include:

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 x =brand of calculator owned by a student
y = number of visits to a particular Web site during a specified period

On the other way, A discrete variable x almost always results from counting, in
which case possible values are 0, 1, 2, 3, . . . or some subset of these integers.
Continuous variables arise from making measurements.
Example 1:

• The number (N) of children in a family can be assumed on of the numbers

0,1,2,3------ therefore, it is discrete variables.
• if x is the pH of a chemical substance, then in theory x could be any number
between 0 and 14: 7.0, 7.03, 7.032, and so on therefore, it is continuous
variables.
Put in your mind, in practice there are limitations on the degree of accuracy
of any measuring instrument, so we may not be able to determine pH,
reaction time, height, and concentration to an arbitrarily large number of
decimal places.
• Size of data: Number of measurements
• Range: Highest-lowest measurements

Example 2

Determine what the key terms refer to in the following study. We want to know the
average (mean) amount of money first year college students spend at ABC College on
school supplies that do not include books. We randomly survey 100 first year students
at the college. Three of those students spent $150, $200, and $225, respectively.

Solution:

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Example 3 of Population, units, variables

Population Unit Variables

All student currently student GPA
enrolled in school Number of credits
Right/left-handed
Hours of work per week
All printed circuit board Board Number of defects
manufacturing during a Location of defects
month Type of defect

Example 4:
Determine what the key terms refer to in the following study.
A study was conducted at a local college to analyze the average cumulative GPA’s of
students who graduated last year. Fill in the letter of the phrase that best describes each
of the items below.
1._____ Population 2._____ Statistic 3._____ Parameter 4._____ Sample 5._____
Variable 6._____ Data
a) all students who attended the college last year
b) the cumulative GPA of one student who graduated from the college last year
c) 3.65, 2.80, 1.50, 3.90
d) a group of students who graduated from the college last year, randomly selected
e) the average cumulative GPA of students who graduated from the college last year
f) all students who graduated from the college last year
g) the average cumulative GPA of students in the study who graduated from the college
last year
Solution

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Data, Sampling, and Variation in Data and Sampling
Data may come from a population or from a sample. Most data can be put into the
following categories:

Qualitative (data). Data derived from nonnumeric attributes, such as

gender, ethnic origin or nationality, Hair colour, blood type, ethnic group,
the car a person drives or other classification variable.
Quantitative (data). Data in the form of numerical measurements or
counts. Quantitative data are the result of counting or measuring attributes
of a population.
Quantitative data may be either discrete or continuous.
✓ All data that are the result of counting are called quantitative discrete data.
✓ All data that are the result of measuring are quantitative continuous data
assuming that we can measure accurately. Measuring angles in radians might
result in such numbers as π/ 6 , π /3 , π /2 , π , 3π /4 , and so on.

Example 5:
If you and your friends carry backpacks with books in them to school, the numbers of
books in the backpacks are discrete data and the weights of the backpacks are
continuous data.

Example 6:
The following table contain of average grade for five students, can you show which data
are quantitative and which one are qualitative?

Student Grade point average

Farah 3.2
Ali 4
Ahmed 2.5
Zainab 3.7
Lyla 3

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Example 7:
Work collaboratively to determine the correct data type (quantitative or
qualitative). Indicate whether quantitative
data are continuous or discrete. Hint: Data that are discrete often start with the
words "the number of."
a. the number of pairs of shoes you own
b. the type of car you drive
c. where you go on vacation
d. the distance it is from your home to the nearest grocery store
e. the number of classes you take per school year.
f. the tuition for your classes
g. the type of calculator you use
h. movie ratings
i. political party preferences
j. weights of sumo wrestlers
k. amount of money (in dollars) won playing poker
l. number of correct answers on a quiz
m. peoples’ attitudes toward the government
n. IQ scores (This may cause some discussion.)

• Probability. A numerical measure between 0 and 1 assigned to events in a

sample space. Higher numbers indicate the event is more likely to occur.
• Probability function: is a rule, denoted by p(x) that assigns numbers to
elements of the sample space.
The relation between inferential statistics and probability can be summarized as
figure below:

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 Numerical Summaries for data

Before we can talk more about numerical techniques, we first need to define some
basic notation. This will allow us to generalise all situations with a simple shorthand

If the n observations in a sample are denoted by x1, x2, . . . , xn,

The important piece of notation is the symbol ∑. This is the upper case of the Greek
letter “sigma”. It is used to represent “the summation of values”. So that:

∑ 𝑥𝑖 = 𝑥1 + 𝑥2 + ⋯ … . +𝑥𝑛
𝑖=0

𝑛
There is also another ∑𝑖=0 𝑥𝑖 2 and (∑𝑛
𝑖=0 𝑥𝑖 )
2

Example 8:

Write the following sum in sigma notation: 1 + 5 + 25 + 125 + 625

Solution

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 Measures of Location

We can describe data features numerically. For example, we can characterize the
location or central tendency in the data by the ordinary arithmetic average or
mean. Because we almost always think of our data as a sample, we will refer to the
arithmetic mean as the sample mean.

Example 10:

A simple random sample of five men is chosen from a large population of men, and
their heights are measured. The five heights (in inches) are 65.51, 72.30, 68.31, 67.05,
and 70.68. Find the sample mean.

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