Statistical Methods in Quality Management - Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards for Statistical Methods in Quality Management lecture.

Statistics

A science concerned with the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data.

Experiment

A process that results in some outcome.

Outcome

The outcome of an experiment is a result that we observe.

Sample Space

The collection of all possible outcomes of an experiment.

Probability

The likelihood that an outcome occurs.

Event

A collection of one or more outcomes from a sample space.

Complement of A

Denoted as c A, the complement of any event A.

Conditional Probability

The probability of occurrence of one event A, given that another event B is known to be true or have already occurred.

Independent Events

Two events A and B are this if P(A|B) = P(A).

Random Variable

A numerical description of the outcome of an experiment.

Probability Distribution

A characterization of the possible values that a random variable may assume along with the probability of assuming these values.

Cumulative Distribution Function

Specifies the probability that the random variable X will assume a value less than or equal to a specified value, x, denoted as P(X ≤ x).

Binomial Distribution

Describes the probability of obtaining exactly x 'successes' in a sequence of n identical experiments, called trials.

Poisson Distribution

Often used to calculate the number of occurrences of an event over a specified interval of time or space.

Probability Density Function

A curve that characterizes outcomes of a continuous random variable and is described by a mathematical function f(x).

Normal Distribution

Familiar bell-shaped curve.

Exponential Distribution

Models the time between randomly occurring events.

Population

A complete set or collection of objects of interest.

Sample

A subset of objects taken from the population.

Descriptive Statistics

Summarize the numerical characteristics of populations or samples.

Median

The middle value (or 50th percentile) when the data are arranged from smallest to largest.

Mode

The observation that occurs most frequently.

Range

The difference between the maximum value and the minimum value in the data set.

Skewness

Describes the lack of symmetry of data.

Kurtosis

Refers to the peakedness (i.e., high, narrow) or flatness (i.e., short, flat-topped) of a histogram.

Frequency Distribution

A table that shows the number of observations in each of several nonoverlapping groups.

Histogram

A graphical depiction of a frequency distribution for numerical data in the form of a column chart.

Sampling Distribution

The distribution of a statistic for all possible samples of a fixed size.

Confidence Interval (CI)

An interval estimate of a population parameter that also specifies the likelihood that the interval contains the true population parameter.

Hypothesis Testing

Involves drawing inferences about two contrasting propositions (hypotheses) relating to the value of a population parameter.