Statistical Methods

(Central tendency, dispersion, standard error, coefficient of

variation, Probability distributions and Confidence limits)

Course Code –BOTY 4204

Course Title- Techniques in plant sciences , biostatistics
and bioinformatics

By – Dr. Alok Kumar Shrivastava

Department of Botany
Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Motihari
 Unit 4- Statistical Methods
Central tendency, dispersion, standard error, coefficient of
variation; Probability distributions (normal, binomial of
Poission) and Confidence limits. Test of statistical
significance (t-test, Chi-square): Analysis of variance-
Random Block Design and its application in plant breeding
and genetics; Correlation and Regression.
 Statistics
 It is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization,
analysis, interpretation and presentation of data in such a way that
meaningful conclusion can be drawn from them. Statistics teaches
us to use a limited sample to make intelligent and accurate
conclusions about a greater population. There are two types of
statistical methods are used in analyzing data: descriptive and
inferential statistics.
 Descriptive statistics are used to synopsize data from a sample
exercising the mean or standard deviation.
 Inferential statistics are used when data is viewed as a subclass of a
specific population.
 Descriptive statistics
• Descriptive statistics uses the data to provide descriptions of the
population, entire through numerical calculations or graphs or
tables.
• Descriptive statistics enables us to present the data in a more
meaningful way, which allows simpler interpretation of the data.

Types of descriptive statistics

Measures of Measures of Measures of Measures of

frequency central dispersion or position
(count, percent, frequency) (percentile ranks,
tendency variation quartile ranks)
(mean, mode, (range, variance,
median) standard deviation)
 Interferential statistics

• Interferential statistics makes interferences and predictions about a

population based on a sample of data taken from the population in
question.
• Through interferential statistics, one can take data from samples
and make generalizations about a population.
• The most common methodologies in inferential statistics are
hypothesis tests, confidence intervals, and regression analysis.
 Types of interferential statistics

Linear Logistic Analysis of Analysis of Statistical Pearson

regression regression variance co-variance significance Correlation
analysis analysis (ANOVA) (ANCOVA) (T-Test) analysis
 Characteristics of statistics

Statistics are aggregates of facts.

Statistic are numerically expressed.
Statistic are affected to a marked extent by multiplicity of causes.
Statistic are enumerated or estimated according to a reasonable
standard of accuracy.
 Data

A piece of information which you collect through your

study called data.
In other words it is a set of facts and figures which are
useful in a particular purpose like a survey or an analysis.
When one arrange data in an organized form, they refers
to as information.
Data can be classified as qualitative and quantitative.
 Types of statistical data
Data

Numerical or quantitative Categorical or non-

(made of numbers, i.e., age, weight, number of children)
numerical or Qualitative
(made of words , i.e., eye colour, gender,
blood type)
Discrete Continuous
Finite options i.e., number of Infinite options i.e., weight, blood pressure
children Nominal Ordinal
Data has no hierarchy Data has hierarchy i.e.,
Interval Ratio i.e., eye colour , blood pain severity,

Differences between Differences between type, dog breed satisfaction rating,

Measurements, true zero mood
measurements but no true
zero, i.e. , temperature in exist, i.e., height, age, etc.
Fahrenheit
 Categorical vs. numerical
Categorical values or observations that can be sorted into
groups or categories. Bar charts and pie graphs are used to
graph categorical data.

Numerical values or observations that can be measured as

these number can be placed in ascending or descending
order. Scatter plots and line graphs are used to graph
numerical data.
 Discontinuous (Discrete) vs. Continuous data
 A set of data is said to be discrete if the values belonging to the set are distinct
and separate. This data obtained through counting. Discrete data is a whole
number (integer) and it can not be subdivided into smaller and smaller parts,
i.e., number of people in a classroom or numbers of brothers in a family,
number of leaves in plant, etc. you cant have 30.5 people in the classroom.
Discrete data can be numeric like numbers of apples but it can also be
categorical like red or blue , or male or female, or good or bad.

 A set of data is said to be continuous if the values belonging to the set can
take on any value within a finite or infinite interval. This data gathered
through measurement like heights of plants, weights of plants, flowering time,
etc. Continuous data continues on and on and on , at least that’s how I think
about it. These are data that can be broken into smaller and smaller units
weight can be infinitely measured using precision equipment and does not
have to stop at three meters.
 Nominal vs. Ordinal data
Nominal values or observations can be assigned a code in
the form of a number where the numbers are simply
labels. You can count but not order or measure nominal
data. Example-sex, and eye colour.

Ordinal values or observations can be ranked or put in

order or have a rating scale attached. You can count and
order, but not measure, ordinal data. Example- house
number and swimming level.
 Data measurement scale
The frame into which we wish to make everything fit is called scale. Every
scale requires some unit and characteristics to classify measurements. The
greater the refinement in the unit of measurement , the greater confidence in
the measurement of findings. There are four measurement scales discovered
by a psychologist researcher named Stanley Stevens.

Data measurement scale

Nominal Ordinal or Interval Ratio

or ranking scale (assume that intervals (same as interval
between each of the scales, but also
Labels or (use for classifying
number are equal) contain absolute
things with ranking) zero)
classificatory scale
(use for classifying things
without ranking)
 Central tendency
A measure of central tendency in a single value that describes the way in
which a group of data cluster around a central value. In other words, it is a
way to describe the center of a data set. It may also be called a center or
location of the distribution. There are three measures of central tendency:
the mean, the median and the mode. Mean is the most frequently used
measure of central tendency and generally considered the best measure of it.
However , there are some situations where either median or mode are
preferred. Median is the preferred measure of central tendency when: there
are a few extreme scores in the distribution of the data.
Measure of central tendency

Mean Median Mode

 Mean
• The mean is the average of a data set. That is used to derive
the central tendency of the data in question.
• It is found by adding all data points and dividing by the
number of data points. The resulting number is known as
mean or average.
• The mean is essentially a model of your dataset. It is the
value that is most common.
• By using the mean one can describe the sample with a single
value that represents the center of the data.
• mean = sum of data/ number of data points
 Median

• It is a simple measure of central tendency. It is the most

suitable measure of average for data classified on an ordinal
scale.
• The middle number , found by ordering all data points and
picking out the one in the middle.
• It is the value which separating the lower half from higher half
of a data sample.
• By comparing the median to the mean , one can get an idea of
the distribution of a data set. When the mean and the median
are same , the data set is more or less evenly distributed from
lowest to highest values.
• If the number of observations is odd then the median is the
observations that are ranked at position N+1/2(It is the middle value).
• If the number of observations is even then the median is the average
value of the observations that are ranked at numbers N/2 and
(N/2)+1(It is the average or mean of the two middle most values).
• Outliers and skewed data have a smaller effect on the median
consequently , when some of the value s are more extreme , the effect
on the median is smaller. When data distribution is skewed the
median is better measure of the central tendency than the mean.
 Mode
• The most frequent number that is, the number that occurs the highest number
of times in any data set. In other words one can say the mode of a set of data
values is the value that appears most often in data set. The mode is the
measure of average that can be used with nominal data. A data set may be
bimodal (data set have two modes ), trimodal (data set have three modes ),
multimodal (data set have more than three modes ) or no-model (If all the
number appear the same number of times in any data). The term mode
originates with Karl Pearson in 1895.
• Like mean and median, the mode is a way of expressing , in a single number,
important information about a random variable or a population.
• The numerical value of the mode is the same as that of the mean and median
in a normal distribution, and it may be very different in highly skewed
distributions.
 Dispersion

Dispersion is the extent to which a distribution is stretched

or squeezed. It is also called variability, scatter or spread.
Common example of measures of dispersion in statistic are
the variance, standard deviation and interquartile range.
Measure of statistical dispersion is a non negative that is
zero if all the data are the same and increases as the data
become more diverse.
 Variance
• Variance is the expectation of the square deviation of a random
variable from it mean. It measures how far a set of number or data
are spread out from their average value. A high variance indicates
the data points are very spread out from the mean, and from one
another. Variance is the average of the squared distances from
each point to the mean.

• It is calculated as the average squared deviation of each number

from the mean of a data set.
 Standard deviation
• Standard deviation is a statistic that measures the dispersion or
variability of a dataset relative to its mean and is calculated as the
square root of the variance
• Standard deviation is a number used to tell how measurement for a
group are spread out from the average (mean), or expected value.
A low standard deviation means that most of the numbers are close
to the average. A high standard deviation means that the numbers
are more spread out.
• It is the best measure of variation.
• If standard deviation is zero it means that all observations are
identical.
 Standard deviation vs. variance
• Standard deviation and variance are the most commonly used
measures of spread.

• Standard deviation looks at how spread out a group of numbers is

from the means, by looking at the square root of the variance . The
variance measures the average degree to which each point differs
from the mean(the average of all data point).

• Standard deviation symbolized by ‘S2’ and variance symbolized

by ‘S’
 Interquartile range
 In descriptive statistics , the interquartile range also called the
midspread, middle 50%, or H-spread.
 It is a measure of statistical dispersion based on dividing a data set
into quartiles. Quartiles divide a rank-ordered data set into four
equal parts the values that divide each part are called the first (Q1),
second (Q2), and third (Q3)quartiles.
 It is equal to the difference between 75th and 25th percentiles, or
between third quartile (upper quartile) and first quartile (lower
quartiles).
IQR=Q3-Q1
 It is less sensitive measure of the spread of a data set and due to its
resistance to outliers, it is useful in identifying when a value is an
outlier.
 Standard Error
• The standard error is the approximate standard deviation
of sample population. Standard error is the statistical term
that measures the accuracy with which a sample
distribution represents a population by using standard
deviation. In statistics, a sample mean deviates from the
actual mean of a population-this deviation is the standard
error of the mean.
• The standard error is the approximate standard deviation of a
statistical sample population.
• The standard error can include the variation between the calculated
mean of the population and one which is considered known or
accepted as accurate.
• The more data points involved in the calculations of the mean, the
smaller the standard error tends to be.
• The term standard error is used to refer to the standard deviation of
various sample statistics, such as the mean or median. For
example, the “standard error of the mean” refers to the standard
deviation of the distribution of sample means taken from the
population.
• The smaller the standard error , the more representative the sample
will be of the overall population.
• In statistics, a sample mean deviates from the actual mean of a
population-this deviation is the standard error of the mean which is
inversely proportional to the sample size.
 Standard deviation vs. standard error

• The standard deviation (SD) measures the amount of

variability or dispersion , for a subject set of data from the
average (mean) or expected value while standard error of
the sample mean is an estimate of how far the sample
mean of the data is likely to be from the true population
mean.

• Standard error is always smaller than standard deviation.

 Coefficient of variation
• The coefficient of variation also known as relative standard
deviation, is a standardized measure of dispersion of a probability
distribution or frequency distribution.
• It is useful static for comparing the degree of variation from one
data series to another. The greater the SD value the less precise the
data because it increases the acceptable range within the deviation.
Value of CV between 2%-3% is good and acceptable.
• It is often expressed as a percentage, and is defined as the ratio of
the standard deviation to the mean.
 Probability distributions
• A probability distribution is a statistical function that
describes all the possible values and likelihoods that a
random variable can take within a given range. This range
will be bounded between the minimum and maximum
possible values, but precisely where the possible value is
likely to be plotted on the probability distribution depends
on number of factors. These factors include the
distribution’s mean, standard deviation, skewness and
kurtosis.
• The most common probability distribution is the normal distribution, or ‘bell
curve’, although several distribution exist that are commonly used. Typically,
the data generating process of some phenomenon will dictate its probability
distribution. This process is called the probability density function.
• There are many different classifications of probability distributions. Some of
them include the normal distribution, chi square distribution, binomial
distribution and Poisson distribution.
• The different probability distributions serve different purposes and represent
different data generation processes.
• The binomial distribution evaluates the probability of an event occurring several
times over a given number of trials and given the events probability in each trial.
A binomial distribution is discrete, as opposed to continuous, since only 1 or 0
is a valid response.
Normal distribution or Gaussian distribution
• It is a probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data
near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean. In graph
form, normal distribution will appear as a bell curve.
• Normal distributions are symmetrical, but not all symmetrical distribution are normal
• The normal distribution is fully characterized by its mean and standard deviation,
meaning the distribution is not skewed and does exhibit kurtosis. This makes the
distribution symmetric and it is depicted as a bell- shaped curve. A normal
distribution is defined by a mean (average) of 0 and a standard deviation of 1, with
askew of 0 and kurtosis=3.
• In a normal distribution , approximately 68% of the data collected fall within +/- 1
standard deviation of the mean; , approximately 95% of the data within +/- 2 standard
deviation of the mean; and 99.7% within +/- 3 standard deviation.
• Unlike the binomial distribution the normal distribution is continuous, meaning that
all possible value are represented (as opposed to 0 and 1 with nothing in between).
 Skewness
• Skewness refers to distortion or asymmetry in a symmetrical bell
curve, or normal distribution, in a set of data.
• Real life data rarely follow a perfect normal distribution. The
skewness and kurtosis coefficients measure how different a given
distribution is from a normal distribution. The skewness measures
the symmetry of a distribution. The normal distribution is
symmetric and has a skewness of 0. if the distribution of the data
set has a skewness less than zero, or negative skewness , then the
left tail of the distribution is longer than the right tail; positive
skewness implies that the right tail of the distribution is longer
than the left.
 Types of Skewness

Positive Normal Negative

Curve has longer tail Mean, Mode Curve has longer
toward the right and and Median tail toward the left
Mean exceeds Mode are equal And Mode exceeds
and Median Mean = Median=Mode Mean and Median
Mode< Median <Mean
Mean < Median<Mode
 Kurtosis
• Like skewness, kurtosis is a statistical measure that is used to describe the distribution.
Whereas skewness differentiates extreme values in one versus other tail, kurtosis measures
extreme values in either tail.

• The kurtosis statistic measures the thickness of the tail ends of the distribution in relation to
the tails of the normal distribution.

• Distributions with large kurtosis exhibits tail data exceeding the tails of the normal
distribution(e.g., 5 or more standard deviations from the mean).
• Distributions with low kurtosis exhibits tail data that is generally less extreme than the tails of
the normal distribution.
• The normal distribution has a kurtosis of three, which indicates the distribution has neither fat
nor thin tails.
• If an observed distribution has a kurtosis greater than 3, the distribution is said to have heavy
tails when compared to the normal distribution. If the distribution has a kurtosis of less than 3,
it is said to have thin tails when compared to the normal distribution. This phenomenon is
known as kurtosis risk.
 Types of kurtosis

Mesokurtosis or Leptokurtosis or Platykurtosis or

Normal Positive Negative
Distribution identical to the A distribution more A distribution less peaked
normal peaked to the normal to the normal
=3 >3 <3
 Poisson distribution
It is discrete probability distribution of the number of events
occurring in a given time period, given the average number of times
the event occurs over that time period .
It is a tool that helps to predict the probability of certain events
from happening when you know how often the event has occurred.
It gives us the probability of a given number of events happening in
a fixed interval of time.
Poisson is positively skewed and when the mean of Poisson
distribution is large, it becomes similar to a normal distribution or
symmetrical.
The shape of a Poisson distribution changes for example , a
Poisson distribution with low mean is highly skewed, with 0 as the
mode. All the data pushed up against 0 , with the tail extending to
the right.
 Binomial distribution
 A binomial distribution can be thought of as simply the probability
of a success or failure outcome in an experiment or survey that is
repeated multiple times. The binomial is a type of distribution that
has two possible outcomes.
 It is common way to test the distribution and it is frequently used in
statistic.
 There are two most important variables in the binomial formula such
as-
1. ‘ N’ it stands for the number of times the experiment is conducted
2. ‘π’ represents the possibility of one specific outcome
 Criteria of binomial distribution
For binomial distribution the number of trial must be fixed.
Every trial must be independent.
The probability always stays the same and equal.
 Formula for binomial distribution
P(x) = N/x!(N-x)!* πx (1-π) N-x
or
P(x) = N/x!(N-x)!* πx (q) N-x

P(x) = probability of x successes out of N trials

N== number of trials
π= probability of success on a given trial
Mean of the distribution (µ)=nπ
Variance (ơ2 )= nπq (it is always less than its mean in binomial variable. For
maximum variance π=q=0.5and qmax=n/4)
q=π-1
q= probability of failure on a given trial
 Confidence limits
 A confidence interval is a range of values we are fairly sure our
true value lies in.

 A confidence interval, in statistics, refers to the probability that a

population parameter will fall between two set values for a certain
proportion of times. Confidence intervals measure the degree of
uncertainty or certainty in a sampling method. A confidence
interval can take ay number of probabilities, with the most
common being a 95% or 99% confidence level.

 Confidence level and confidence interval are interrelated but are

not exactly the same.
 A confidence interval is a range of values likely would contain
an unknown population parameter. Confidence level refers to the
percentage of probability, or certainty , that the confidence
interval would contain the true population parameter when you
draw a random sample many times. Or, in vernacular , “we are
99% certain (confidence level ) that most of these datasets
(confidence intervals ) contain the true population parameter.”
 Confidence interval calculates the probability that a population
parameter will fall between two set values.
 Confidence intervals measure the degree of uncertainty in a
sampling method.
 Most often confidence intervals reflect confidence levels of 95%
or 99%.
For example a result might be reported as 50%+-6%, with a
95% confidence. So the confidence interval : 50%+-6%= 44%
to 56% and the confidence level: 95%.

Confidence level is expressed as percentage.

A 0% confidence level means you have no faith at all that if

you repeated the experiments that you would get the same
results. In fact, you are sure the result s would be completely
different.

A 100% confidence level means there is no doubt at all that

if you repeated the experiments that you would get the same
results. In fact, you are sure the result s would be repeatable of
the time.
Thank you