Statistical theory aims to provide a foundation for studying the collection and interpretation of data that does not depend on the particular details of the substantive field in which the data is being considered. This gives a systematic way to approach new problems, and a common language for summarizing results; ideally the foundations and common language ensure that statistical aspects of one...

Being critical of using significance tests in empirical research, the Board of Scientific Affairs (BSA) of the American Psychological Association (APA) convened a task force "to elucidate some of the controversial issues surrounding applications of statistics including significance testing and its alternatives; alternative underlying models and data transformation; and newer methods made possib...

Understanding the methods used by economists requires some basic terminology regarding the distribution of random variables. The mean of a distribution is simply the arithmetic average of all of the observations. The median is the observation that falls in the middle; half of the observations have values below the median and half are above. Both the mean and the median are measures of the cente...