Introduction to Statistical Thinking

The next 3 chapters deal with the statistical inference associated with the relation between two variables. The relation corresponds to the effect of one variable on the distribution of the other. The variable whose distribution is being investigated is called the response. The variable which may have an effect on the distribution of the response is called the explanatory variable.

In this section we consider the case where the explanatory variable is a factor with two levels. This factor splits the sample into two sub-samples. The statistical inference compares between the distributions of the response variable in the two sub-samples. The statistical inference involves point estimation, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing. R functions may be used in order to carry out the statistical inference. By the end of this chapter, the student should be able to: