Question

Elucidate the nature and scope of Statistics.

Answer 1

Nature of Statistics:

• Different Statisticians and Economists differ in views about the nature of statistics, some call it a science and some say it is an art.
• Tippett on the other hand considers Statistics both as a science as well as an art.

Scope of Statistics:

• Statistics is applied in every sphere of human activity – social as well as physical – like Biology, Commerce, Education, Planning, Business Management, Information Technology, etc.

Statistics and Economics:

• Statistical data and techniques are immensely useful in solving many economic problems
• Such as fluctuation in wages, prices, production, distribution of income and wealth, and so on.

Statistics and Firms:

• Statistics is widely used in many firms to find whether the product is conforming to specifications or not.

Statistics and Commerce:

• Statistics are the lifeblood of successful commerce.
• Market survey plays an important role to exhibit the present conditions and forecast the likely changes in the future.

Statistics and Education:

• Statistics are necessary for the formulation of policies to start a new course, according to the changing environment.
• There are many educational institutions owned by the public and privately engaged in research and development work to test the past knowledge and evolve new knowledge.
• These are possible only through statistics.

Statistics and Planning:

• Statistics is indispensable in planning. In the modem world, which can be termed as the “world of planning”, almost all the organizations in the government are seeking the help of planning for efficient working, for the formulation of policy decisions and execution of the same.
• In order to achieve the above goals, various advanced statistical techniques are used for processing, analyzing, and interpreting data.
• In India, statistics play an important role in planning, both at the central and state government levels, but the quality of data highly unscientific.

Statistics and Medicine:

• In Medical Sciences, statistical tools are widely used. In order to test the efficiency of a new drug or to compare the efficiency of two drugs or two medicines, a t-test for the two samples is used.
• More and more applications of statistics are at present used in clinical investigation.

Statistics and Modern applications:

• Recent developments in the fields of computer and information technology have enabled statistics to integrate their models and thus make statistics a part of the decision-making procedures of many organizations.
• There are many software packages available for solving simulation problems.