20. Probability, Statistics and Applications

This chapter discusses probability and statistics and includes a discussion on discrete random variables; probability distributions; sample spaces; sampling; the abuse of statistics; variance and standard deviation; hypothesis testing. Statistics is an empirical science that is concerned with the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. They allow the behaviour of a population to be studied and inferences to be made about the population. Probability is a way of expressing the likelihood of a particular event occurring, and the applications of probability to the software reliability field and queuing theory are briefly discussed.