Question: Hi how do you find patterns in data

Suzy Whoriskey answered on 19 Nov 2020:

Good morning,
I can look for patterns in data using statistical models – these are like maths equations.
Depending on what sort of data you have, you can use different statistical models, and we have lots to choose from!
To look for patterns what we need is a sample of data – because it would be too time consuming and expensive to look at everyone in the world, or every tree in the world, or every fish in the world, etc. So we take a random and representative sample of the people, trees or fish, and any patterns or relationships we find in the sample, we can assume happens in the population as a whole.
This is what statistics is all about!
Statistics is the science of learning from data.
Suzy