Welcome to Our Statistics Homeschool Math Course

Course Sample for Our Statistics Homeschool Math Course

Introduction to Statistics

What are Statistics?

• Statistic: a numerical fact
  • A statistic is a quantifiable fact, such as a temperature, a total, an amount of money, etc.
  • The study of statistics is the manipulation of these facts to glean information

What aren’t Statistics?

(Excuse the grammar!)

• Not guesses
• Not made up
• Not useless

Vocabulary

• Demographic: a vital or statistic about a population, such as age, gender, or racial identity
  • Demographics can be used to describe anything for which statistics are being gathered. For instance, a demographic for a series of temperatures could be the location at which the temperatures were recorded. However this term is usually applied to people.
• Sample: a subset of the population
  • A sample is used when the population is too large for statistics to be useful or collected.
• Population: a group sharing one or more demographics
  • For instance, all US citizens
• Mean: average
• Mode: number that occurs the most in a range
• Median: the middle number when a range of numbers are in order
• Probability: chances, odds
• Hypothesis: a proposition assumed as a premise in an argument; what you are trying to disprove
  • This is the educated guess for which we are gathering statistics.
• Range: difference between largest number and smallest number in a set
• Bell (normal) distribution: theoretical frequency distribution represented by a normal curve
• Outlier: an observation, result, well outside the expected range of values
• Variance (mean square deviation): the square of the standard deviation
• Standard Deviation: a measure of dispersion in a frequency distribution, equal to the square root of the mean of the squares of deviations from the arithmetic mean of the distribution
  • Represented by the Greek letter sigma: σ
  • This isn’t as difficult as it sounds!
• Z-score: a measure that quantifies the distance a data point is from the mean in a range

To view a full sample of this class, click here.

More About Our Statistics Homeschool Math Course

Statistics are used in every field, from the census, to lottery, to investments, to science, to computing, to television. In fact, a person would be hard-pressed to find a field in which statistics are not used. This Statistics homeschool math course can help homeschool teens understand how statistics are determined and gauge the reliability of information presented to them.

Statisticians use a sample that represents the entire group. This is because it is usually not realistic or possible to study an entire group. Sample groups are most often used in exit polls during presidential elections, television ratings, and sales figures. Through these Statistics lessons, homeschool teens learn how to interpret the many statistics they encounter in everyday life.