1.38 What is statistics? On a final exam that one of us recently gave, students were asked, “How would you define ‘statistics’

to someone who has never taken a statistics course?”

One student wrote, “You want to know the answer to some question. There’s no answer in the back of a book.

You collect some data. Statistics is the body of procedures that helps you analyze the data to figure out the answer and how sure you can be about it.” Pick a question that interests you and explain how you might be able to use statistics to investigate the answer.