INTRODUCTION
In recent days we hear talking about' 'Statistics' from a common person to highly
qualified person . It only shows how 'Statistics' has been intimately. connected with wide range
of activities in daily life.
Statistics can be used either as plural or singular. When it is used as plural, it is a
systematic presentation of facts and figures. It is in this context that majority of people use the
word 'Statistics'. They only meant mere facts and figures. These figures may be with regard to
production of food grains in different years, area under cereal crops in different years, per capita
income in a particular state at different times, etc., and these are generally published in Trade
Journals, Economics and
Statistics Bulletins. Newspapers, etc. When statistics is used as singular, it is a science which
deals with collection, classification, tabulation, analysis and interpretation of data.
Statistics as a science is of recent origin. The word 'Statistics' has been derived from a
Latin word which means 'State' which in turn means 'politically organized people' i.e.,
government. Since governments used to collect the relevant data on births and deaths, defence
personnel, financial status of the peoples, import and export, etc. Statistics was identified with
Government. Recently, it pervades all branches of sciences, social sciences and even in
Humanities like English literature. For
example, in English literature the style of a particular poet or an author can be assessed with the
help of statistical tools.
In the opinion of Fisher 'Statistics' has got three important functions to play (i) Study of
statistical populations (ii) study of the variation within the statistical populations (iii) study of the
methods of reduction of data.
P.C.. Mahalanobis compares 'Statistician' with a 'Doctor' where Doctor prescribes medicine
according to the disease of the patient whereas statistician suggests statistical technique
according to the data in hand for proper analysis and interpretation.
Bowley defined statistics as 'the science of measurements of the social organism regarded
as a whole in all its manifestations.' Another definition says that it is 'quantitative data affected to
a marked extent by a multiplicity of causes.' Yet another definition says that it is a 'Science of
counting' or 'Science of averages' and so on. But all these definitions are incomplete and are
complementary to each other.
There are some of the limitations of 'Statistics' also when the data are not properly
handled. People start disbelieving in statistics when the (1) data are not reliable (2) computing
spurious relationships between variables (3) generalizing from a small sample to a population
without taking care of error involved.
If one is ensured that data are reliable and is properly hande1 by a 'skilled statistician', the
mistrust of statistics will disappear and in place of it precise and exact revelation of data will
come up for reasonable conclusions.