新概念英语——新概念英语文章及译文.docVIP

美联英语提供：新概念英语文章及译文1 /test/xiaobai.aspx?tid=16-73675-0 　　　Statistics 　　统计学 　　There were two widely divergent influences on the early development of statistical methods. Statistics had a mother who was dedicated to keeping orderly records of governmental units (states and statistics come from the same Latin root status) and a gentlemanly gambling father who relied on mathematics to increase his skill at playing the odds in games of chance. The influence of the mother on the offspring, statistics, is represented by counting, measuring, describing, tabulating, ordering, and the taking of censuses-all of which led to modern descriptive statistics. From the influence of the father came modern inferential statistics, which is based squarelyon theories of probability. 　　统计方法的早期发展受到两种截然不同的影响。统计学有一个“母亲”，她致力于井井有条地记录政府机构的文件(国家和统计学这两个词源于同一个拉丁语词根，status)，还有一个有绅士般的赌博“父亲”，他依靠数学来提高赌技，以便在几率的游戏中取胜。“母亲”对其子女统计学的影响表现在计数、测量、描述、制表、归类和人口普查。所有这些导致了现代描述统计学的诞生。由于“父亲”的影响则产生了完全基于概率论原理的现代推理统计学。 　　Descriptive statistics involves tabulating, depicting and describing collections of data. These data may bequantitative such as measures of height, intelligence or grade level -- variables that are characterized by an underlying continuum -- or the data may represent qualitative variables, such as sex, college major or personality type. Large masses of data must generally undergo a process of summarization or reduction before they are comprehensible. Descriptive statistics is a tool for describing or summarizing or reducing to comprehensible form the properties of an otherwise unwieldy mass of data. 　　描述统计学涉及对所收集数据的制表、制图和描述。这些数据可以是数量性的数据，如高度、智商、或者是层级性的数据——具有连续性的变量——或数据也可以代表性质变量，如性别、大学专业或性格类型等等。数量庞大的数据通常必须经过概括或删减的程序才能为人所理解。描述统计学就是这样一个工具，它对极其庞杂的数据进行描述、概括或删减，使其变成能为人理解的东西。 　　Inferential statistics is a formalized body of methods for solving another class of problems that present great difficulties for the unaided human mind. This general class of problems characteristically involve attempts to make prediction