Definition and Meaning, Nature and Scope of Educational Statistics

 Definition and Meaning, Nature and Scope of Educational Statistics

Definition of statistics:

Statistics is a science which deals with the method of collecting, classifying, identifying and interpreting numerical date which throw some light on any sphere of enquiry and investigation.

The term statistics has been defined widely, some important definitions has been provided here-

According to M.K Kendall- "Statistics is the science collecting, analysing and interpreting numerical data".

According to English and English- "The statistics is a science as well as art that gathers and coordinates numerous facts within a determined field, treats these mathematically so that the numerical relation among these facts may be established clearly and free from anomalies and to chance factors".

According to G.Simpson and F. Kofika- "The word statistics today refers either to quantitative information or to method of dealing with quantitative information of qualitative information".

The definition of Ferguson indicates one type statistics i.e inferential or parametric statistics. the main focus of the definition is to infere about characteristics of population. it is known as the process of generalisation. the group or sample observation are not confined to the group but are used to estimate properties of the population from which the sample has been drawn. it does not cover the whole concept of statistics.

Statistics is the data of certain observations and phenomenon. the school statistics means number of teachers (science and arts) enrollment of the student, number of classrooms etc/

Now the "statistics" is the independent field of study or academic discipline. it has wide application in behaviour science and social science.

Meaning of Educational Statistics.

Educational measurement or educational statistics deals with the date associate with education. statistics has been very widely used in education and psychology. as for example- In the scaling of mental test and other psychology data for measuring the reliability and validity of test score, for determining the I.Q item analysis and factor analysis vast application of statistical theory has given rise to a new disciple called psychometry and education. 

Considering education as a whole, there are two aspects of educational statistics-

1. Pedagogical aspect-

It involves the entire process of teaching and learning connected by the context of subject matter taught.

2. Evaluation aspect-

Evaluation is a continuous and comprehensive assessment of achievement and progress of a pupil.

Examination is one of the tools of evaluation of the achievement done through some type of test and the result is usually in two ways-

- By rank order giving a serial position on the group i.e 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc or by rank only like O,A,B,C,D etc. however, this does not provide an enact measurement of achievement.

- By awarding marks or score.

Nature and Scope of Educational Statistics.

The following are the characteristics of educational statistics-

- Basically the term statistics is used for the indexes or measures of a sample or a group, where as data or scores are the measures of an individual. the score is the numerical description of an individual and statistics are the quantitative description of a group or a sample.

- Statistics is the independent field of study or a academic discipline which deals with collection, classification, analysis and interpretation of data to draw the inferences.

- Statistics is the empirical science. the data are collected by conducting an experiments, observation and survey.

- Statistics methods are the techniques, used to facilitate in the analysis and the interpretation of numerical data. it makes the raw data meaningful.

-The foundation of statistical methods is provided by mathematics, but now it has achieved recognation.

-Statistics are used to draw inferences about the properties of population on the basis of sample statistics or observation.

- Statistics techniques are used to estimate the sampling error or chance error for an accurate or valid conclusions.

- In social sciences and behavioural sciences large sample is selected for the study. a large sample reduces the error of measurement and the statistics of a large sample are the good estimates of parameters.

Related: 

Meaning, Nature and Scope of educational Technology 

references: educational evaluation and statistics.

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