1 Why you should care about statistics
This chapter covers
- How statistics turn data into insights, giving data further value and opportunity
- How statistics helps software engineers, data scientists, and AI developers
- Recognizing the difficulties, misaligned incentives, and ethical concerns of statistics
Statistics describes and infers insights from data, often by analyzing a sample that represents a larger population or domain. Statistical analysis is a practical application of statistics that collects, analyzes, interprets, and quantifies numerical data1. Since statistics is a broad discipline that affects any role working with data, this book covers techniques that should benefit anyone who wants to tease out truth and insight from data.
We can count on data—and the techniques we use to get insight from it—never going away. The electronic connectivity of our everyday lives (and work lives) is only accelerating, even as we take it for granted. Therefore, knowledge of statistics will be timeless. Statistical proficiency and literacy have the following benefits: