Defining statistics these days has become a statistic itself. The institute of statistics and applied economics, ISAE, the only and only recognized statistical training institute for the Anglophone speaking countries in the region and Africa as a whole is associated with the saying ‘using figures to make informed decisions’. So would you like to believe like others who read ISAE fliers and its website  ( http://www.statistics.mak.ac.ug ) that figures are synonymous to statistics? Maybe that could be one definition, but remember there should be only one correct definition else it is incomplete thus incorrect!

Alright at the recently concluded 57^th ISI conference, the first ever ISI conference (refer to http://www.wesonga.com ), that took place in Durban from 16^th to 23^rd August 2009 there was a display of papers on statistics. One motivating finding was that there were basically two types of papers presented, one was statistics and the other was application of statistics. Oh no, do not ask me yet what statistics is, but the conference reality was that in some sessions, a paper would be presented introducing a new theorem, its lemma and proofs! In the end one may or may not conclude with just an example, not case study findings – no figures at all!  So is theorem tantamount to statistics?

If we took an example of a statistic, the most popular one which even politicians know, known as the mean, a measure of central tendency and we translated it into something like the one below.

1. for (i=0; i <= N; i++)
2. {
3.             sum += X[i];
4. }
5. mean=Sum/N;

We should note that the given five statements above are referred to as code, but not figures. So is code equivalent to statistics?

Hopefully, we now know what statistics is else if not yet known then watch this space, but  you may also contribute for a more detailed discussion and definition of statistics.

Over to you!!