M A Jalil1 and Md. Jamil Hasan Karami 2*
1&2Department of Statistics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
*Correspondence: karami.stat@du.ac.bd (Dr. Md. Jamil Hasan Karami, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh).
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ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the understanding of definitions of several widely used statistical terms such as degrees of freedom, locations, range, dispersion, and grouped and ungrouped data. The terms have been redefined along with examples so that they stand alone to express their meaning. In this article, a new term ‘the smallest unit’ in a statistical sense has been defined and illustrated in some instances. It is also indicated how statisticians or practitioners of statistics are using it knowingly or unknowingly. We have mentioned the application of the smallest unit in the classification of data. Moreover, the concept of the smallest unit has been synced with the definition of the sample range so that the range can cover the entire space of values. Therefore, the proposed sample range can now better approximate the population range. We have shown that researchers can end up with misleading results if they treat a dataset as ungrouped data when it is truly grouped data. This has been discussed in the computation of different percentiles. Moreover, the crux of the definition of degrees of freedom and dispersion has been pointed out which has helped repelled the confusion behind these terms. We have shown how the concept of linearly independent pieces of information is related to the definition of degrees of freedom. We have also emphasized not mixing the definition of standard deviation and/or variance with the whole concept of dispersion because the former is merely a single measure among many measures of the latter.
Keywords: Smallest unit, Locations, Sample range, Degrees of freedom, Dispersion, Grouped, and Ungrouped data.
Citation: Jalil MA. and Karami MJH. (2020). A critical exploration of some fundamental terms and terminologies in statistics, Int. J. Mat. Math. Sci., 2(3), 45-50. https://doi.org/10.34104/ijmms.020.045050
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