Fundamental Concepts of Statistics

Material is taken from book:

Statistical Quality Control, Douglass Montgomery

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 Population and Samples
• Population is a set of all items that posses a certain characteristic of
interest.
– Example: Suppose our objective is to determine the average weight of
cans of brand A soup processed by our company for the month of July.
The population in this case is the set of all cans of brand A soup that
are produced in the month of July (say 50,000). Other brands of soup
made during this month are not of interest, only the population brand A
soup cans.
• A sample is a subset of a population.
– Consider our brand A soup. To save ourselves the cost and effort of
weighing 50,000 cans, we randomly select a sample of 500 cans of
brand A soup from the July output.

Give some examples of populations and

samples that you have encountered

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 Population Vs. Sample

• Population: A data set that consists of measurements of all the

members of some group.
• Sample: A dataset which consists of measurements of only a portion of
the members from the population.
Population
Process Sample

• Results from a sample are used to assess the nature of the population.

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Sample Average and Variance

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Standard Deviation of Data

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Attribute (Discrete) and Variable (Continuous) Data

• Variable (Continuous) is when the factor being

measured in expressed on a continuous scale, such as
measuring a metal layer thickness, voltage, viscosity,
Length
• Attribute (Discrete) is when a factor being measured
can only take on certain values, such as integers 0, 1,
2,3… For instance, the number of nonconformities or
defects in printed circuit boards would be a discrete
distribution
Give some examples of discrete and
continuous data
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 Probability Distribution
• A probability distribution is a mathematical model that relates the value of
the variable with the probability of occurrence of that value in the
population.
– If the layer thickness of a metal sheet is considered a random variable,
it will take on different values in the population according to some
random mechanisms . The probability distribution of layer thickness
describes the probability of occurrence of any values of layer thickness
in the population

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Examples of Discrete and Continuous
Distributions

Sometimes called a Sometimes called a

probability mass function probability density function

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Example of Discrete Distribution: Binomial Distribution

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Example of Continuous Distribution

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Uniform Distribution for the Example

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 Different Probability Distribution Models
• Discrete distributions
– Binomial distribution
– Poisson distribution
• Continuous distributions
– Normal distribution
– Lognormal distribution
– Exponential distribution
– Weibull distribution

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Mean of the Distribution

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Physical Significance of Mean

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Variance of the Distribution

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Standard Deviation

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