Environmental

Engineering
Research Workshop
Statistical Methods in research

Sarath Raj, PhD

I. What is Statistics?

Science of collecting, organizing, analyzing, and

interpreting data

It helps make informed decisions using data

Types

Descriptive Statistics:
Summarizes data (mean, median, charts).

Inferential Statistics:
Makes predictions or inferences from a sample to a population
 Descriptive Statistics

Used generically in place of measures of central

tendency and dispersion for inferential statistics.

🟥 These statistics describe or summarize the qualities of data.

Another name is “summary statistics”, which are univariate.

Mean
Median
Mode
Range
Standard Deviation, etc.
 Measures of Central
Tendency
These measures tap into the average distribution
of a set of scores or values in the data.

Mean
Median
Mode
 The Mean

The “mean” of some data is the average score or

value, such as the average age of an MPA student or
average weight of professors that like to eat donuts.

Inferential mean of a sample: X=( X)/n

Mean of a population: =( X)/N
 The Mean Problem
The main problem associated with the mean value of
some data is that it is sensitive to outliers.

The average weight of people might be

affected if there was one in the group that
weighed 600 pounds.
The Median

Because the mean average can be sensitive

to extreme values, the median is sometimes
useful and more accurate.

The median is simply the middle value

among some scores of a variable. (no
standard formula for its computation).
 Percentiles

If we know the median, then we can go up or

down and rank the data as being above or
below certain thresholds.

You may be familiar with standardized tests.

90ᵗʰ percentile, your score was higher than
90% of the rest of the sample.
 The Mode

The most frequent response or

value for a variable.

Multiple Modes

Bimodal
Multimodal
 Measures of dispersion

Measures of dispersion tell us

about variability in the data.

How much do values differ for a variable from the min

to max, and distance among scores in between. We
use:
Range
Standard Deviation
Variance (standard deviation squared)
 Measures of dispersion

To glean information from data, i.e. to make an inference,

we need to see variability in our variables.

Measures of dispersion give us information about how

much our variables vary from the mean, because if they
don’t it makes it difficult infer anything from the data.
Dispersion is also known as the spread or range of
variability.
 The Range

r=h–l Where h is high and l is low

In other words, the range gives us the value

between the minimum and maximum values
of a variable.

Understanding this statistic is important in

understanding your data, especially for
management and diagnostic purposes.
 Standard Deviation

A standardized measure of
distance from the mean.

In other words, it allows you to know how

far some cases are located from the mean.
How extreme our your data?

68% of cases fall within one standard

deviation from the mean, 97% for two
deviations.
 Standard Deviation

X = score for each point in data

_
X = mean of scores for the variable

n = sample size (number of observations or

cases
 Confidence Intervals

Gives a range of values that is likely to contain the true population

parameter (like the mean or proportion). It reflects the precision of
your estimate.

🟥 The level C of a confidence interval gives the probability that

the interval produced by the method employed includes the true
value of the parameter.

A study finds the average exam score of a sample of

students is 75, with a 95% confidence interval of [72, 78].

Interpretation: “We are 95% confident that the true

average score of all students lies between 72 and 78.
 Inferential statistics
While descriptive statistics summarize the characteristics
of a data set, inferential statistics help you come to
conclusions and make predictions based on your data.

When you have collected data from a sample, you can use
inferential statistics to understand the larger population
from which the sample is taken.

Inferential statistics have two main uses:

✅ making estimates about populations.

✅ testing hypotheses to draw conclusions about

populations.
 Statistical Significance

A result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have

occurred by chance. A “statistically significant difference” means
there is statistical evidence that there is a difference.

In simple cases, it is defined as the probability of making a decision to

reject the null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is actually true.

The decision is often made using the p-value: the p-value is the
probability of obtaining a value of the test statistic at least as extreme
as the one that was actually observed, given that the null hypothesis is
true.

if the p-value is less than the significance level, then the null hypothesis
is rejected. The smaller the p-value, the more significant the result is
said to be.
 Degrees of freedom
Degrees of freedom, often represented by df, is the number of
independent pieces of information used to calculate a statistic.
It’s calculated as the sample size minus the number of
restrictions.

Simple Analogy
Imagine you have 3 test scores that must average to 70.
You pick the first score: 65
You pick the second score: 75
The third score? It’s fixed, it must be 70 to keep the average at 70.

✅ You were free to choose only 2 values.

🔒 The third one is not free—it’s constrained by the total.
So in this case, the degrees of freedom = 2.
 Student’s t-test
A t-test compares the means of two independent groups to
determine if they are significantly different.

Type When to Use Example

Group A vs Group B
Independent t-test Compare two different groups
test scores

Compare the same group before Pre-test vs Post-test

Paired t-test
and after a treatment scores
 Student’s t-test
Group A Group B
70 78
75 80
72 79
74 81
73 77
 Paired t-test (Before and After)
Used to compare two measurements taken from the same
subject, before and after a treatment.

Difference
Student Before After
(D)
1 65 70 5
2 67 72 5
3 70 75 5
4 72 76 4
5 68 73 5
 ANOVA
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a statistical test used to
assess the difference between the means of more than two
groups.
At its core, ANOVA allows you to simultaneously compare
arithmetic means across groups.
You can determine whether the differences observed are
due to random chance or if they reflect genuine, meaningful
differences.

Type When to Use Example

Uses one independent variable or
Group A vs Group B vs
One-way ANOVA factor
Group C test scores

Uses two independent variables

Previous groups with
Two-way ANOVA or factors
different species
ANOVA
 Correlation & Regression

Is there a relationship between x and y?

What is the strength of this relationship

Pearson’s r

Can we describe this relationship and use this to

predict y from x?
Regression

Is the relationship we have described statistically

significant?
t test
 The relationship between x and y

Correlation: is there a relationship between 2 variables?

Regression: how well a certain independent variable predict

dependent variable?

Correlation I Causation

In order to infer causality: manipulate independent variable

and observe effect on dependent variable
 Scattergrams

Y Y Y
Y Y Y

X X X

Positive correlation Negative correlation No correlation

 Variance vs Covariance

Notes on your sample:

If you’re wishing to assume that your sample is

representative of the general population (RANDOM
EFFECTS MODEL), use the degrees of freedom (n – 1) in
your calculations of variance or covariance.

But if you’re simply wanting to assess your current sample

(FIXED EFFECTS MODEL), substitute n for the degrees of
freedom.
 Variance vs Covariance
Do two variables change together?

Covariance Variance

Gives information on the Gives information on

degree to which two variables variability of a single variable.
vary together

Note how similar the covariance is to variance: the equation

simply multiplies x’s error scores by y’s error scores as
opposed to squaring x’s error scores.
 Covariance

When X and Y : cov (x,y) = pos.

When X and Y : cov (x,y) = neg.
When no constant relationship: cov (x,y) = 0
 Example of Covariance

x y xi - x yi
- y ( x - x )( y - y )
i i
0 3 -3 0 0
2 2 -1 -1 1
3 4 0 1 0
4 0 1 -3 -3
6 6 3 3 9
y 3  7
x 3

What does this number tell us?

 Problem with Covariance

The value obtained by covariance is dependent on the size of

the data’s standard deviations:

if large, the value will be greater than

if small…

even if the relationship between x and y is exactly the same in

the large versus small standard deviation datasets.
 Solution: Pearson’s r

Covariance does not really tell us anything

Solution: standardise this measure

Pearson’s R: standardises the covariance value.

Divides the covariance by the multiplied standard

deviations of X and Y:
 Regression

Correlation tells you if there is an association between

x and y but it doesn’t describe the relationship or allow
you to predict one variable from the other.

To do this we need REGRESSION!

 Best - Fit Line

Aim of linear regression is to fit a straight line, ŷ = ax + b, to data

that gives best prediction of y for any value of x
This will be the line that
minimises distance between ŷ = ax + b
data and fitted line, i.e.
the residuals slope intercept

= ŷ, predicted value
= y i , true value
ε = residual error
 General Linear Model

Linear regression is actually a form of the

General Linear Model where the parameters
are a, the slope of the line, and b, the
intercept.

y = ax + b +ε

A General Linear Model is just any model that

describes the data in terms of a straight line
 Multiple Regression

Multiple regression is used to determine the effect of a number of

independent variables, x₁, x₂, x₃ etc, on a single dependent
variable, y

The different x variables are combined in a linear way and each

has its own regression coefficient:

y = a₁x₁+ a₂x₂ +…..+ anxn + b + ε

The a parameters reflect the independent contribution of each

independent variable, x, to the value of the dependent variable, y.

i.e. the amount of variance in y that is accounted for by each x

variable after all the other x variables have been accounted for
THANK YOU!
Sarath Raj, PhD