Solved – What’s the difference between mathematical statistics and statistics

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What's the difference of mathematical statistics and statistics?

I've read this:

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and
interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including
the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and
experiments.

And this:

Mathematical statistics is the study of statistics from a mathematical
standpoint, using probability theory as well as other branches of
mathematics such as linear algebra and analysis.

So what would be the difference beetween them? I can understand that the processes of collection may not be mathematical, but I guess that organization, analysis and interpretation are, am I missing something?

Best Answer

There are three types of statisticians;

  1. those that (prefer to) work with real data,
  2. those that (prefer to) work with simulated data,
  3. those that (prefer to) work with the symbol $X$.

math stat types would be (3). Typically, type (1) statisticians have some prefix attached to make clear the source of the data they work with (biostatistics, econometrics, psychometrics,....) because these fields have implicit shared assumptions about the data they use and some commonly accepted ordering of the plausibility of these assumptions.

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