Basic Statistics Concepts for Data
Science
1. Descriptive Statistics
It is used to describe the basic features of data that provide a summary of the
given data set which can either represent the entire population or a sample of
the population.
It is derived from calculations that include:
Mean: It is the central value which is commonly known as arithmetic
average.
Mode: It refers to the value that appears most often in a data set.
Median: It is the middle value of the ordered set that divides it in exactly half .
2. Variability
Variability includes the following parameters:
Standard Deviation: It is a statistic that calculates the dispersion of a data
set as compared.
Variance: It refers to a statistical measure of the spread between the
numbers in a data set. In general terms, it means the difference from the
mean. A large variance indicates that numbers are far apart from average
value. Small variance indicates that the numbers are closer to the average
values. Zero variance indicates that the values are identical to the given set.
Range: This is defined as the difference between the largest and smallest
value of a dataset.
Percentile: It refers to the measure used in statistics that indicates the value
below which the given percentage of observation in the dataset falls.
Quartile: It is defined as the value that divides the data points into quarters .
Interquartile Range: It measures the middle half of your data . In general
terms, it is the middle 50% of the dataset.
3. Correlation
It is one of the major statistical techniques that measure the relationship
between two variables. The correlation coefficient indicates the strength of the
linear relationship between two variables.
A correlation coefficient that is more than zero indicates a positive
relationship.
A correlation coefficient that is less than zero indicates a negative
relationship.
Correlation coefficient zero indicates that there is no relationship between
the two variables.
4. Probability Distribution
It specifies of all possible events. In simple terms, an event refers to the result
of an experiment. Events are of two types dependent and independent .
Independent event: The event is said to be an Independent event when it is
not affected by the earlier events .
Dependent event: The event is said to be dependent when the occurrence
of the event is dependent on the earlier events
The probability of independent events is calculated by simply multiplying the
probability of each event and for a dependent event is calculated by conditional
probability.
5. Regression
It is a method that is used to determine the relationship between one or more
independent variables and a dependent variable. Regression is mainly of two
types:
Linear regression: It is used to fit the regression model that explains the
relationship between a numeric predictor variable and one or more predictor
variables.
Logistic regression: It is used to fit a regression model that explains the
relationship between the binary response variable and one or more predictor
variables.
6. Normal Distribution
Normal is used to define the probability density function for a continuous
random variable in a system . The standard normal distribution has two
parameters – mean and standard deviation . When the distribution of random
variables is unknown, the normal distribution is used. The central limit theorem
justifies why normal distribution is used in such cases.
7. Bias
In statistical terms, it means when a model is representative of a complete
population. This needs to be minimized to get the desired outcome .
The three most common types of bias are:
Selection bias: It is a phenomenon of selecting a group of data for statistical
analysis, the selection in such a way that data is not randomized resulting in
the data being unrepresentative of the whole population.
Confirmation bias: It occurs when the person performing the statistical
analysis has some predefined assumption.
Time interval bias: It is caused intentionally by specifying a certain time
range to favor a particular outcome.
