Mathematical statistics is the application of probability theory, a branch of mathematics, to statistics, as opposed to techniques for collecting statistical data. Specific mathematical techniques which are used for this include mathematical analysis, linear algebra, stochastic analysis, differential equations, and measure theory.
Statistical data collection is concerned with the planning of studies, especially with the design of randomized experiments and with the planning of surveys using random sampling. The initial analysis of the data often follows the study protocol specified prior to the study being conducted. The data from a study can also be analyzed to consider secondary hypotheses inspired by the initial results, or to suggest new studies. A secondary analysis of the data from a planned study uses tools from data analysis, and the process of doing this is mathematical statistics.
Data analysis is divided into:
descriptive statistics – the part of statistics that describes data, i.e. summarises the data and their typical properties.
inferential statistics – the part of statistics that draws conclusions from data (using some model for the data): For example, inferential statistics involves selecting a model for the data, checking whether the data fulfill the conditions of a particular model, and with quantifying the involved uncertainty (e.g. using confidence intervals).
While the tools of data analysis work best on data from randomized studies, they are also applied to other kinds of data. For example, from natural experiments and observational studies, in which case the inference is dependent on the model chosen by the statistician, and so subjective.
The following are some of the important topics in mathematical statistics:
Probability distribution
A probability distribution is a function that assigns a probability to each measurable subset of the possible outcomes of a random experiment, survey, or procedure of statistical inference.
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We explore statistical physics in both classical and open quantum systems. Additionally, we will cover probabilistic data analysis that is extremely useful in many applications.
We explore statistical physics in both classical and open quantum systems. Additionally, we will cover probabilistic data analysis that is extremely useful in many applications.
Discrete choice models are used extensively in many disciplines where it is important to predict human behavior at a disaggregate level. This course is a follow up of the online course “Introduction t
The sample mean (sample average) or empirical mean (empirical average), and the sample covariance or empirical covariance are statistics computed from a sample of data on one or more random variables. The sample mean is the average value (or mean value) of a sample of numbers taken from a larger population of numbers, where "population" indicates not number of people but the entirety of relevant data, whether collected or not. A sample of 40 companies' sales from the Fortune 500 might be used for convenience instead of looking at the population, all 500 companies' sales.
In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule (the estimator), the quantity of interest (the estimand) and its result (the estimate) are distinguished. For example, the sample mean is a commonly used estimator of the population mean. There are point and interval estimators. The point estimators yield single-valued results. This is in contrast to an interval estimator, where the result would be a range of plausible values.
In statistics, the median absolute deviation (MAD) is a robust measure of the variability of a univariate sample of quantitative data. It can also refer to the population parameter that is estimated by the MAD calculated from a sample. For a univariate data set X1, X2, ..., Xn, the MAD is defined as the median of the absolute deviations from the data's median : that is, starting with the residuals (deviations) from the data's median, the MAD is the median of their absolute values. Consider the data (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 9).
Statistics lies at the foundation of data science, providing a unifying theoretical and methodological backbone for the diverse tasks enountered in this emerging field. This course rigorously develops
This course is an introduction to quantitative risk management that covers standard statistical methods, multivariate risk factor models, non-linear dependence structures (copula models), as well as p
As large, data-driven artificial intelligence models become ubiquitous, guaranteeing high data quality is imperative for constructing models. Crowdsourcing, community sensing, and data filtering have long been the standard approaches to guaranteeing or imp ...
EPFL2024
We propose a novel approach to evaluating the ionic Seebeck coefficient in electrolytes from relatively short equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, based on the Green-Kubo theory of linear response and Bayesian regression analysis. By exploiting the ...
In statistical modeling, regression analysis is a set of statistical processes for estimating the relationships between a dependent variable (often called the 'outcome' or 'response' variable, or a 'label' in machine learning parlance) and one or more independent variables (often called 'predictors', 'covariates', 'explanatory variables' or 'features'). The most common form of regression analysis is linear regression, in which one finds the line (or a more complex linear combination) that most closely fits the data according to a specific mathematical criterion.
A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis. Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters. While hypothesis testing was popularized early in the 20th century, early forms were used in the 1700s. The first use is credited to John Arbuthnot (1710), followed by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1770s), in analyzing the human sex ratio at birth; see .
Bayesian statistics (ˈbeɪziən or ˈbeɪʒən ) is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a degree of belief in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, such as the results of previous experiments, or on personal beliefs about the event. This differs from a number of other interpretations of probability, such as the frequentist interpretation that views probability as the limit of the relative frequency of an event after many trials.
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The state-of-the-art methods for estimating high-dimensional covariance matrices all shrink the eigenvalues of the sample covariance matrix towards a data-insensitive shrinkage target. The underlying shrinkage transformation is either chosen heuristically ...