Stat's Fantastic! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Census

Censuses have been carried out for thousands of years; one of the earliest recorded was the Census of Quirinius, taken during the the reign of Emperor Augustus in around 6 AD (and being linked to the Census that took Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem when Jesus was born).

This Census was for gathering of taxes, but modern Censuses serve many more purposes, including helping decide where to locate essential services like public transport, schools and hospitals.

Answer: Life expectancy

According to the World Health Organization, the global life expectancy was 70 years in 2011. However, this can vary dramatically from country to country. A child born in 2013 in Japan would be expected to live to around 84 years of age; while someone born in the same year in Chad has a life expectancy of 49.

Answer: Very expensive houses bring the average up

The truth is that an average house price is not very meaningful because nowadays there are so many expensive houses dragging the number up. Medians are used in these sorts of 'skewed' data, because they offer a measure that tells you which number is in the middle of the distribution.

Answer: Projections

According to the projections by "Internet World Stats" (based on various population Census counts), India will take over from China as the world's most populated country by 2050. It is estimated that India will have over 1.6 billion people by then, with China remaining relatively stable at 1.3 billion.

Answer: Normal

The 'normal' distribution is also known to statisticians as the Gaussian distribution (named after a famous statistician, Carl Gauss). The normal distribution is basically a way of estimating the likelihood that a specific number will fall within a certain range.

It has many applications due to the naturally occurring statistics that fit within it; for example, height and blood pressure within the human population both fall within a normal bell curve.

Answer: No

Incidence is the measure of a particular phenomenon (e.g. a disease) over a particular time period. For example, the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in a given year. Prevalence, on the other hand, is the measure of a phenomenon at any given time. Again using the diabetes example, that would be the total number of people who have diabetes at a given time.

Answer: Per hundred

Percentage comes from the Latin "per centum", literally meaning, by the hundred. It is a very common statistical measure.

Answer: Galileo Galilei

Galileo was the only 16th Century astronomer of the choices. Due to the new equipment available in this era, he was able to provide strong observational evidence about the heliocentric nature of the solar system (that is, that the earth revolves around the sun).

Despite this, he was placed under house arrest for his views due to the unwavering attitude of the church and greater society at the time that believed the earth was central to the solar system. Along with his interest in statistics, Galileo also made several breakthroughs in the world of physics.

Answer: False

A correlation simply means that two events (or statistics) are connected in some way, but does not prove that one is caused by another.

Answer: Significant

Statisticians set a level of 'confidence' above which they are convinced that a difference is actual, based on the statistics they are using, known as a 'significant difference'. The level of confidence will depend on the type of data being looked at.

For example, psychological studies dealing with human reactions are often set a lower confidence level than more predictable data such as chemical reactions.