ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the language of statistical methods and how to apply these methods. Statistics is a way of organizing, describing, and making inferences from data. Statistical methods are used in the natural, physical, and social sciences. Measures of central tendency reduce data down to a single descriptive statistic. The mode is the most basic and most frequently occurring measure of central tendency. A symmetrical distribution will have an identical mean, median, and mode in a bell curve. Symmetrical distributions have specific aspects which allow higher-level statistical testing than extremely asymmetrical distributions. The statistic has faced some criticism. Some baseball commentators and historians have argued that the statistic is biased as it rewards a batter’s position in the batting order. Run batted in results may be skewed due to “good” batters batting for average teams, and other “average” batters hitting after “better” batters.
