Читать книгу Medical Statistics - David Machin - Страница 27

Just as a farmer gathers and processes a crop, a statistician gathers and processes data. For this reason, the logo for the UK Royal Statistical Society is a sheaf of wheat. Like any farmer who knows instinctively the difference between oats, barley, and wheat, a statistician becomes an expert at discerning different types of data. Sections of this book will refer to different data types and so we start by considering these distinctions. Figure 2.1 shows a basic summary of types, although some data do not fit neatly into these categories.

Figure 2.1 Broad classification of the different types of data with examples.