Introduction
What follows in this chapter is merely a tiny peek into the huge topic of data analysis and presentation. This is not intended to be a substitute for a course in statistics. There are plenty of good textbooks on the subject (and plenty of courses at any university), so what’s presented here is just a little something to get you started in Python.
Learning objectives
- You will gain a rudimentary understanding of two important descriptive statistics: the mean and standard deviation.
- You will understand how to calculate these statistics and be able to implement them on your own in Python.
- You will learn the basics of Matplotlib’s Pyplot interface, and be able to use
matplotlib.pyplotto create line, bar, and scatter plots.
Terms introduced
- arithmetic mean
- central tendency
- descriptive statistics
- Matplotlib
- normal distribution
- quantile (including quartile, quintile, percentile)
- standard deviation
Original author: Clayton Cafiero < [given name] DOT [surname] AT uvm DOT edu >
No generative AI was used in producing this material. This was written the old-fashioned way.
This material is for free use under either the GNU Free Documentation License or the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License (take your pick).