Introduction to Statistics
The word statistics was first used by a German scholar Gotifried Achenwall in the middle of the 18th century as the science of statecraft concerning the collection and use of data by the state.
The word statistics comes from the Latin word “Status” or Italian word “Statistia” or German word “Statistik” or the French word “Statistique”; meaning a political state, and originally meant information useful to the state, such as information about sizes of population (human, animal, products etc) and armed forces.
According to pioneer statistician Yule, the word statistics occurred at the earliest in the book “the element of universal erudition” by Baron (1770). In 1787 a wider definition used by E.A.W. Zimmermann in “A Political survey of the present state of Europe”. It appeared in encyclopedia of Britannica in 1797 and was used by Sir John Sinclair in Britain in a series of volumes published between 1791 and 1799 giving a statistical account of Scotland. In the 19th century, the word statistics acquired a wider meaning covering numerical data of almost any subject whatever and also interpretation of data through appropriate analysis.
Now statistics is being used in different meanings.
- Statistics refers to “numerical facts that are arranged systematically in the form of tables or charts etc. In this sense it is always used a plural i.e. a set of numerical information. For instance statistics of prices, road accidents, crimes, births, educational institutions etc.
- The word statistics is defined as a discipline that includes procedures and techniques used to collect, process and analyze the numerical data to make inferences and to reach appropriate decision in situation of uncertainty (uncertainty refers to incompleteness, it does not imply ignorance). In this sense word statistic is used in the singular sense. It denotes the science of basing decision on numerical data.
- The word statistics are numerical quantities calculated from sample observations; a single quantity calculated from sample observations is called statistics such as mean. Here word statistics is plural.
“We compute statistics from statistics by statistics”
The first place of statistics is plural of statistics, in second place is plural sense data and in third place in singular sense methods.
and 
) are equal; the alternative hypothesis says that they are not equal.
) is zero; the alternative hypothesis says that it is not equal to zero.
) is zero, and the alternative says that it is not equal to zero.