Please help me explain "Statistics could course the path of the future based on the data from the past."
917786
most statistics follow a pattern, whether it be linear, quadratic, or whatever. Once you have enough data to establish a pattern, you can accurately predict the remainder of the line.\n\nFor instance, you have a line that looks to be half a parabola. Once it starts going back up, you can be pretty certain of where it's going to be.
158096
The worst limitation is that it is not forward looking. It cannot predict the future, only analyze the past, compare and contrast the present with the past.
509499
Fortune telling - none of the things that people employ to tell you your future are true.  No crystal ball holds the key to your future.\n\nYour future will happen, and then you will know about it.\n\nThe only way you will truly learn about your future is if some inventor creates a time machine and you move forward in time.\n\nI am most curious as to why you feel you need to know your future now.\n\nGood Luck! the best is yet to be.
188021
As you can see the answers are all over the place.  I have provided a link to a website which shows statistics on a graph from the year 2001.  Although it's not the most current of information, it is a good starting point.
35213
b, of course.\n\nif one has some preconceived notions, statistics can be used as objective data to shed factual light on the subject.  doing so will either support your notions (choice a) or discredit them.  \n\nanybody, when faced with objective and factual information that discredits their ideas, should reconsider those ideas or incorporate the new facts into their philosophy.  this is the cornerstone of open and honest discussion.\n\nstatistics as "scientific data" are meaningless unless one adheres to the fundamental premise of science, which is that experiment is the sole judge of truth.\n\nit is reasonable to use statistical data to support your ideas in a debate, as long as you remain open to reconsidering your position in the light of new information!  \n\nanyone can (and many do) cherry-pick or manipulate statistics to support a particular idea, when there is plenty of other statistical data that they pretend doesn't exist or is irrelevant.  doing so is intellectually dishonest.
719415
I think in both directions. \n\nThose who forget the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them.\n\nThe prophecies given in the past tell about the Days to Come.\n\netc.
377891
I think statistics has a higher chance of being relevant. It's usual to be able to analyze studies in any subject.
1078564
Don't let your past cast shadows on your future.\n A good friend told me that once.I've no idea where he got it from but it makes sense.Your past is just that...your past.We all make mistakes,just don't let them rule your life.
1085908
The same importance as studying any history.  You study history to try and predict the future.
532490
go to this site, its very good,\n\nit gives clear explanations and statistics
1024578
Descriptive...Statistics that are based on entire populations\n\nInferential....Statistics that are base on samples from a population\nCharacteristics about the whole population are inferred from the samples\n\nI think this is right.
559773
Firstly, don't overly concern yourself with the concept of fixing the past.  As a numerologist, Norman Shine, stated in one of his books: "Worrying about the future is just as escapist at living in the past."  In other words, if you spend all of your time worrying about the past, then you are wasting the present time and will have a very bleak future.\n\nIn regards to theories of changing the past, that's a theoretical astrophysics debate as well as a good philisophical debate question.  Either:\n\n1.) You can change the past and affect the direct future.\n2.) You can change the past, but the now new future is the future of another/parallel universe.\n3.) Somehow the laws of nature will prevent us from preventing the past/future (depending on your origin of time).\n4.) You change the past and cause a paradox and at that very moment the universe ceases to exist (according to Dr. E. Brown on Back To The Future)\n\nMy advice is to try and correct what is going on in the present to help your future.  You cannot change the past (that I know of), but you can change the future.  It may not be easy, but it is more possible than a quick-fix time machine-changing past patchwork.
363839
in order to do statistics you need data\n\nie.  we need number to do this
752397
I would go to the distant future and speak with people who perhaps allready have the time machine so I could understand how to use it carefully without disrupting the continuum. I would be careful on going to the future to get reports on sports games and the stock market because each future you visit is only one particular future, and with each passing second it creates a completely differrent future. I also might take christians and other religeous fanatics to the far distant past to prove to them that evolution occured once and for all and their bible thumping is basicaly meaningless. However this could also be dangerous because any foreign disease on us, or exhaled by us that was exposed to the primordial world could totaly change what we know to be current history. Every invention created by us happens very carefully, we make nothing before we are ready. If (in total speculation) a future time traveller visited the past he would have all precautions accounted for, such as disease, mistakes, and keeping a low profile. In our century we have no such precautions. So if I ever did get a hold of a time machine, I would return it to whoever it came from. Another problem with using a time machine to change the past or "the grandfather" paradox is Richard Feynmans theory of "a particle will take every possible path in space time" meaning if I went back and changed a past, I would change the past in a totaly differrent time frame then the temporal continuum I am used to, so when I returned everything would be the same. However I would be still messing with the universe. Theirfore if I ever found a empty time machine I would indeed leave it alone, or return it to the big temporal lost and found. We are not ready for such technology, and probaly wont be for a long time.
227479
IMO, fb2kool is on to something.  Luck is used to describe a short series of events that appear to deviate from the average (when they simply contribute to the average).  The strange thing about probability is that the "average" never seems to happen.
311119
I teach statistics to Actuarial postgraduate - so I think I am a real mathematician.\n\nSo don't give up hope yet - but I do believe the bias has changed massively since it went from the alpha to beta stage.  We can make a difference!
270990
Descriptive Statistics do no intend to "fit" a distribution on the data or to predict new observations given the data.\nInstead, it pretends to "describe" the data in terms of its central tendency measures (mean, median, etc.) as well as dispersion statistics (variance,  rank, inter-quartile rank, etc.), bias statistics, etc.\nSummaries like histograms are also a good example of descriptive statistics.