ABSTRACT

The aim of the previous chapters has been to describe and summarise patterns in single sets of data. Until now, we have assumed that these patterns are specific to those data sets. However, it is possible that certain aspects may be more general and might emerge again if other data sets were collected from the same geographical individual. This tendency for data to possess both common and idiosyncratic patterns is important in statistics because it provides a means of studying large and complex ‘populations’ without enumerating all of their characteristics. This process is termed ‘statistical inference’, and is the focus of this chapter.