StatisticsChapter 2The spine of statisticsWhat is the spine of statistics?The spine of statistics: (an acronym for)Standard errorParametersInterval estimates (confidence intervals)Null hypotheses significance testingEstimation Testing hypotheses involves building statistical models of the phenomenon of interest.Scientists build (statistical) models of real-world processes to predict how these processes operate under certain conditions. The models need to be as accurate as possible so that the prediction we make about the real world are accurate too.The degree to which a statistical model represents the data collected is known as the fit of the model.The data we observe can be predicted from the model we choose to fit plus some amount of error. Scientists are usually interested in finding results that apply to an entire population of entities.Populations can be very general or very narrow.Usually, scientists strive to infer things abut general populations rather than narrow ones.We collect data from a smaller subset of the population known as a sample, and use these data to infer things about the population as a whole.The bigger the sample, the more likely it is to reflect the whole population. Statistical models are made up of variables and parameters.Parameters are not measured an are (usually) constants...