I put that word in the title because it is one of the few technical terms in statistics which does not have meaning in everyday language.
I have always felt that statistics (& statisticians) suffer such a poor public image because, in part at least, their words do not mean what everybody thinks they mean
In the theory & practice of statistics:
Average does not mean most
Error does not mean you did your sums wrong
A random sample is not one drawn from any group of people or objects who happen to be conveniently to hand
And significant does not mean big, important, or even noteworthy
I have always felt that statistics (& statisticians) suffer such a poor public image because, in part at least, their words do not mean what everybody thinks they mean
In the theory & practice of statistics:
Average does not mean most
Error does not mean you did your sums wrong
A random sample is not one drawn from any group of people or objects who happen to be conveniently to hand
And significant does not mean big, important, or even noteworthy
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