CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

4.1

Overview

4.2

Definition

Statistics is the methodology which scientists and mathematicians have

developed for interpreting and drawing conclusions from collected data
(Jarkko Isotalo, n.d., pg. 2). Statistics is the science of gaining information
from numerical and categorical data which everything that deals even
remotely with the collection, processing, interpretation and presentation of
data belongs to the domain of statistics, and so does the detailed planning
of that precedes all these activities (Jarkko Isotalo, n.d., pg. 2).
David Stephenson (2000) states that statistics is concerned with
exploring, summarising, and making inferences about the state of complex
systems Application of statistics is very broad since it can be applied to
different fields such as Mathematics, Industry, Biology, Business and
Astronomy . For example, Mechanical Engineering deals with the
measurement of machine parts by the means of observation. Statistical
methods are found to be the most probable measurements to avoid these
measurement errors.
Agresti & Finlay (1997) stats that statistics consists of a body of
methods for collecting and analysing data. From the above, it should be
clear that statistics is much more than just the tabulation of numbers and
the graphical presentation of these tabulated numbers. Statistics provides
methods for design, description and inference. Design is the process
where planning and carrying out research studies; description is the
process to summarise and explore data while inference is a process where

predictions are making and the phenomena represented is generalising by

the data (Jarkko Isotalo, n.d., pg. 3).
Statistics was only used by the rulers in the past. Besides, the
applications of statistics was very limited by the rulers to get their
information about lands, agriculture, commerce, population of their states
to assess their military potential, their wealth, taxation and other aspects
of government (eMathZone, 2014). There are two important factors which
contribute towards the development of statistics in the world. First is need
to make sense of the large amount of data collected by population surveys
in the emerging nation states (David Stephenson, 2000). Meanwhile, the
mathematical foundations for statistics advanced significantly due to
breakthroughs in probability theory inspired by games of chance
(gambling) at the same time (David Stephenson, 2000).
Probability is also one of the related areas of mathematics like
statistics which concern with analysing the relative frequency of events.
However, there are basic differences in interpreting the relevance
mathematical evidences. For example, probability predicts the likelihood of
future events while statistics analyses the frequency of past events (Steve
Skiena, 2001). Besides, probability is primarily a theoretical branch of
mathematics, which studies the consequences of mathematical definitions
while statistics is primarily an applied branch of mathematics, which tries
to make sense of observations in the real world (Steve Skiena, 2001). In
short, probability theory enables us to find the consequences of a given
ideal world, while statistical theory enables us to measure the extent to
which our world is ideal (Steve Skiena, 2001).
When performing statistical analysis on a set of data, the mean,
median, mode, and standard deviation are all helpful values to calculate
(Andrew MacMillan, 2006). These values are useful when creating groups
or bins to organize larger sets of data. The median and mean are
measures of central tendency where each summarises the main feature of
a data set. Unlike the mean, the median is unaffected by extreme scores
or more often known as outliers (Victoria University of Wellington, 2013).
The mode of a set of data is the value which occurs most frequently. The
standard deviation is the average distance between the actual data and
the mean.

Xi

- Equation 2.1

Mean ,= i=1
n

n
F
2
Median , M =L+
I
f

( )

X i

i=n
1

n1 i=1
Standard Deviation , =

- Equation 2.2

- Equation 2.3

WhereL: lower limit of the interval containing the median

n: total number of frequencies
F: cumulative frequency corresponding to the lower limit
f: frequencies in the interval containing the median
I: width of the interval containing the median

4.3

Scheduling Technique