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Statistics is a field of inquiry that studies the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. It is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines , from the physical and social sciences to the humanities ; it is also used and misused for making informed decisions in all areas of business and government .
The question of whether results from a particular study generalize to other people, places or times arises only when one follows an inductivist research strategy. If the goal of a study is to deductively test a theory, one is only concerned with factors which might undermine the rigor of the study, i.e. threats to internal validity.
in statistics, any information analyzed, extracted or interpolated from polls, tests or logs; in computer sciences, the return value of a function, state of a system or list of records matching a query (e.g. web search). The result type is the data type of the data returned by a function.
Once the aim of the study is defined, the possible answers to the research question can be proposed, transforming this question into a hypothesis. The main propose is called null hypothesis (H 0 ) and is usually based on a permanent knowledge about the topic or an obvious occurrence of the phenomena, sustained by a deep literature review.
Statistics is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines, including natural and social sciences, government, and business. Business statistics applies statistical methods in econometrics, auditing and production and operations, including services improvement and marketing research. [66]
In his book Statistics as Principled Argument, Robert P. Abelson presents the perspective that statistics serve as a standardized method for resolving disagreements among scientists, who could otherwise engage in endless debates about the merits of their respective positions. From this standpoint, statistics can be seen as a form of rhetoric.
Reproducibility, closely related to replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method.For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or in a statistical analysis of a data set should be achieved again with a high degree of reliability when the study is replicated.
A good sample selection is key as it allows one to generalize the findings from the sample to the population, which is the whole purpose of survey research. In addition to this, it is important to ensure that survey questions are not biased such as using suggestive words. This prevents inaccurate results in a survey.