Statistics is very serious!

Vocabulary

1. Guess the meaning of these international words. Check with your teacher or a dictionary

Statistics – statistician, organize, summarize, analyze – analysis, official, policies, diagnosis, patient, agriculture, geology, resource, experiment, actuarial, premium, optimize – optimization, produce – production, procedure, basis, phenomenon – phenomena, specialized – specialization, phase.

2. Key words:

To make up one’s mind	Вирішувати
To support	Підтримувати, підпирати
Valid	Вагомий, обґрунтований, правильний
Reasonable	Розумний, обґрунтований, раціональний
Census	Перепис населення
Survey	Опитування, анкетування, дослідження, огляд
Current	Поточний, діючий, нинішній
To evaluate = to assess	Оцінювати, давати оцінку
Treatment	Лікування
Fertilizer	Добриво
Suitable premium	Прийнятний страховий внесок (премія)
Advertising	Реклама
Inevitable	Неминучий, постійний
To set up a model	Створювати модель
Random	Випадковий
Misconception	Помилкове уявлення
To churn out	Виробляти велику кількість, випускати потоком
To attempt	Намагатися, прагнути

Reading

Task 1. Work in pairs. Make a list of areas where statistics is used today.

Task 2. Read the text and compare your list with statistics applications mentioned in the text

Statistics is very serious!

I am a first-year student at the University of Donetsk. I study at the Faculty of Mathematics and take a course in statistics.

When I made up my mind to be a statistician my friends laughed at me. Some of them quoted Mark Twain: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics’. Others quoted Andrew Lang, ‘He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than illumination’. I’ll try to prove that statistics is used for illumination rather than support.

A lot has changed since the times of Mark Twain. Today statistics is a science, a branch of applied mathematics. It is concerned with scientific methods for collecting, organizing, summarizing, presenting and analyzing data, as well as drawing valid conclusions and making reasonable decisions on the basis of that analysis.

It’s being used more and more in various applications. In government many people are involved in collecting data from censuses and surveys. Such data are often referred to as ‘official statistics’. They are used to evaluate and improve current policies. On a smaller scale, statistics is used in medicine, for example, to assess which of two treatments is better or to aid in the diagnosis of a patient. Statisticians are involved in agriculture, with the comparison of different fertilizers; in geology, with the estimation of oil resources; in the analysis of psychological experiments; in the actuarial profession, with the establishment of suitable premiums; in market research, to discover and interpret trends and frequencies; and in industry, in optimization of production and formation of advertising policies.

Statistical procedure can vary from the drawing and assessment of a few simple graphs to carrying out very complex mathematical analysis. There is clearly an inevitable link between statistics and probability, which provides the mathematical basis for setting up models to describe random phenomena.”

As you see my profession requires profound knowledge of the theory of probability and calculus, and we study those subjects in our first and second year. In our third year specialization begins. We are given specialized courses in sampling theory, statistical estimation theory, statistical decision theory, correlation theory. Some students begin doing their own research under the supervision of their scientific advisers. So, at the end of our study at the university we are prepared to apply our knowledge to practice.

You may ask me what a statistician actually does. The typical view is that you get data and hand it to a statistician. But this is a misconception. A good statistician will be integrated with projects right from the start, not sitting in a back room churning out numbers. Databases and special programming packages are the tools of the trade, but the main part of the job is the modeling phase where you build a model which attempts to describe the process which produces the data. With a model, you can answer questions such as whether a particular cancer treatment works.

I seem to have proved that statistics is very serious. Nevertheless, in conclusion I’d like to offer another joke. Have you heard this definition of a statistician? It’s someone who has his bottom in the oven and his head in the freezer and who says that his body temperature is average.

Task 3. Answer the questions on the text

1. What does statistics deal with?

2. What is official statistics?

3. How is statistics used in medicine?

4. How does statistical procedure vary?

5. How is statistics connected to probability?

6. What is the stereotype about the job of a statistician?

7. What is the main task of a statistician today?

Task 4. Find equivalents of these words or expressions in the text

a. To decide.

b. To repeat exactly what someone else has said or written.

c. An official process of counting a country’s population and finding out about the people.

d. To judge how good, useful, or successful something is.

e. Happening or existing now.

f. To differ.

g. An idea that is wrong or untrue, but which people believe because they do not understand the subject properly.

h. To produce large quantities of something, especially without caring about quality.

i. Something that is done to cure someone who is ill.

Speaking

Give the reasons behind your decision to take a course in statistics.

Unit 9