Interesting problem, I stumple quite often. And now I´m convinced, if you regard the science "statistics" is the correct term. The same holds, if statistical results are summarized, typical term "political or commercial statistics", because you use different statistical methods or objects.
If you try a statistical description of a special case you should use the singular form. Typical case woud be "error statistic" in a measurement.
I´m curious for the next answer.
If viewed as a scientific discipline, "statistics" should be treated as singular. But often, we also define a (mble) function of sample observations to be a statistic (if it doesn't contain any parameter of interest) like the sample mean or sample proportion. Then, a bunch of such functions can be referred to as statistics (i.e the plural of the word statistic, meaning such a function).
Interesting problem, I stumple quite often. And now I´m convinced, if you regard the science "statistics" is the correct term. The same holds, if statistical results are summarized, typical term "political or commercial statistics", because you use different statistical methods or objects.
If you try a statistical description of a special case you should use the singular form. Typical case woud be "error statistic" in a measurement.
I´m curious for the next answer.
Dear Ed et al., interesting question! I see that Statistics is the discipline, and we commonly make use of Descriptive Statistics, Frequencies, t-tests etc. Doesn't 'statistics' sound plural? Can we be blamed for thinking it's plural?
Next, I observe that 'statistic' is applied as 'Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic, D', 'Shapiro-Wilk statistic, W'. So if the D value is a statistic, the it seems to be singular (sole) value.
I quote here: 'The Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic for a given cumulative distribution function F(x) is D_n= \sup_x |F_n(x)-F(x)|; where sup x is the supremum of the set of distances.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Smirnov_test
Dear Prof Kamal, Ed et al., actually to us who use stats as a research tool, it doesn't matter whether it is singular or plural. On top of that our research data, and impact of our research on student learning, on farmers, fishermen, hospital patients is far more important!
It is both. As singular, it is the science that deals with collection /generation, presentation, analysis and interpretation of certain numerical data. As plural, statistics refer to a sum total of observations, that are expressed quantitatively and not qualitatively, and are collected with a specific objective in view.
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