ABSTRACT
Statistics provide very powerful tools for analyzing data, including tools for analyzing sampling activities. Some of these common tools are determining the number of samples needed, standard deviation, regression analysis, and extraneous values, and predicting the component values between sampled points. In all cases calculators or computers equipped with standard software, including spreadsheets, can be used to do statistical calculations. In order to understand what information the statistic is providing, however, and to be able to explain this to others, it is important to know how the statistic is calculated. This is also important when trying to understand what others are trying to explain using statistics.
