Statistics

• You can't prove anything with statistics, but it does give you a degree of solidity in data analysis and prediction.
• A long introduction to statistics is beyond the scope of this lecture, but it is the study of data.
• If you've got a 1,000,000,000 data points, what can you say about it.
• With statistics you make assumptions, hopefully explicitly, and then make you can make statements about the data.
• If you've got historical data, you can predict what's going to happen.
• The prediction is with a degree of certainty.
• The prediction may not work if the assumptions do not hold.