Ricardo A. Olea 2008 INTRODUCTION Statistics is the science of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, modeling, and displaying masses of numerical data primarily for the characterization and understanding of incompletely known systems. Over the years, these objectives have lead to a fair amount of analytical work to achieve, substantiate, and guide descriptions and inferences. application/pdf 10.3133/ofr20081017 en Geological Survey (U.S.) Basic Statistical Concepts and Methods for Earth Scientists reports