Statistics: Making sense out of data

Recently, I am exploring more about statistics. The obvious reason is I don't know much about it but to drill down,

• People with stats knowledge can actually design the whole experiment/ project
• Given a data set statistical methods can help us more to understand/summarize it
• It is useful to determine validity of a particular claim (hypothesis)
• It is useful to compare everyday things and find the difference or make better choices

I read this really nice article about applying simple statistics on data where a statistician tried to disprove Elon Musk's claim about Tesla fires. Personally I am huge admirer of Mr Musk but this article changed my view how stats can be used to prove or disprove the real world hypotheses.

Generally statistics can be divided into two categories,

• Descriptive statistics
• Inferential statistics 

Descriptive statistics is associated with quantitative data and as the name suggests it is used to describe the data. Descriptive statistics is pretty common in everyday life. 

Inferential statistics is more associated with drawing inferences/conclusions. It helps us to prove or disprove arguments.

There are lot of good resources online but I found following two extremely useful,

• Khan Academy Statistics
• Youtube series by Brandon Foltz

I have taken notes from Brandon Foltz vidoes and will be sharing them here.