Statistics is a science about understanding the overall quantitative characteristics and quantitative relations of objective phenomena. It is a methodological science to understand the quantitative regularity of objective phenomena by collecting, sorting out and analyzing statistical data. Because the quantitative research of statistics is objective, accurate and testable, statistical method has become the most important method in empirical research, which is widely used in the analysis and research of nature, society, economy, science and technology and other fields.
Statistics refers to the original total or summary calculation of "statistics" in Chinese. The word "statistics" in English comes from Latin status, which refers to the state or condition of various phenomena.
At present, the word statistics has three meanings: statistical data are digital data and related text descriptions that reflect the state and regularity of a large number of phenomena; Statistical work is about collecting, sorting out, analyzing statistical data and making inferences to explore the nature and laws of things; Statistical science is a theory and method to study how to collect, sort out and analyze quantitative data of a large number of phenomena and infer their essence and regularity, such as socio-economic statistics and mathematical statistics.
School of Political Arithmetic:
The school of political arithmetic was born in capitalist Britain in the middle of17th century. Its founder is william petty (W. Petty, 1623- 1687), and his masterpiece is the book Political Arithmetic, which he finished in 1676. At the time of writing this masterpiece, it coincided with the third Anglo-Dutch War, domestic economic difficulties, and threats from the Netherlands and France abroad.
In order to let people know and be sure that "Britain's career and various problems are not in a sad state", Patty compares and analyzes the economic strength of Britain, the Netherlands and France and the reasons for this difference in strength in political arithmetic, and puts forward the way of Britain's prosperity from the aspects of trade, tax system, division of labor, capital and the use of idle labor. This numerical expression laid a methodological foundation for the formation and development of statistics.
There are three kinds of figures used by Pei Di in his book: the first is the figures obtained from statistical investigation and empirical observation of social and economic phenomena. The second category is the number calculated by some mathematical method. The third category is illustrative numbers used for theoretical reasoning. Therefore, Marx said: "william petty, the father of political economy, is also the founder of statistics to some extent."