Michael E. Sobel | |
|---|---|
| Born | Michael Edward Sobel |
| Nationality | United States |
| Education | Florida State University University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| Known for | Sobel test |
| Awards | Member of the Sociological Research Association |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Statistics |
| Institutions | Columbia University |
| Thesis | Lifestyle and Social Structure in Contemporary American Society: Concepts, Definitions, and Analyses (1980) |
| Doctoral advisor | Halliman H. Winsborough |
Michael Edward Sobel is an American statistician who is a professor in the Department of Statistics at Columbia University. [1] He is known for developing the Sobel test, a statistical test that is used to detect the presence of mediation between two variables by a third variable. [2]
A descriptive statistic is a summary statistic that quantitatively describes or summarizes features from a collection of information, while descriptive statistics is the process of using and analysing those statistics. Descriptive statistics is distinguished from inferential statistics by its aim to summarize a sample, rather than use the data to learn about the population that the sample of data is thought to represent. This generally means that descriptive statistics, unlike inferential statistics, is not developed on the basis of probability theory, and are frequently nonparametric statistics. Even when a data analysis draws its main conclusions using inferential statistics, descriptive statistics are generally also presented. For example, in papers reporting on human subjects, typically a table is included giving the overall sample size, sample sizes in important subgroups, and demographic or clinical characteristics such as the average age, the proportion of subjects of each sex, the proportion of subjects with related co-morbidities, etc.
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Statistics is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.
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