Statistics:Introduction/Why

Why Should I Learn Statistics?
Statistics is probably the most useful subject anyone can learn. Newspapers are filled with statistical data, and anyone who is ignorant of statistics is at risk of being seriously misled about important real-life decisions such as what to eat, who is leading the polls, how dangerous smoking is, etc. Knowing a little about statistics will help one to make more informed decisions about these and other important questions. Furthermore, statistics are often used by politicians, advertisers, and others to twist the truth for their own gain. For example, a company selling the cat food brand "Cato" (a fictitious name here), may claim quite truthfully in their advertisements that eight out of ten cat owners said that their cats preferred Cato brand cat food to "the other leading brand" cat food. What they may not mention is that the cat owners questioned were those they found in a supermarket buying Cato.

More seriously, those proceeding to higher education will learn that statistics is the most powerful tool available for assessing the significance of experimental data, and for drawing the right conclusions from the vast amounts of data faced by engineers, scientists, sociologists, and other professionals in most spheres of learning.

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