Statistics: Science Or Art

Whether Statistics is a science or an art is often a subject of debate. Science refers to a systematized body of knowledge. It studies cause and effect relationship and attempts to make generalization in the form of scientific principles or laws. It describes objectively and avoids vague judgments as goods or bad. Science, in short, is like a light house that gives light to the ships to find out their own way but does not indicate the direction in which they should go. Art, on the other hand, refers to skill of handling facts so as to achieve a given objective. It is concerned with ways and means of presenting and handling data, making inferences logically and drawing relevant conclusions.

While a century ago there were some misgivings among natural scientists as to whether statistics had the right to be recognized as a distinct science, now almost all sciences are statistical. What this suggests is that the design of scientific experiments and the evaluation of their result makes use of principles and practices growing out of the science of statistics. However, statistics as a science is not similar to exact sciences like Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, etc. This is because statistical phenomena are generally affected by multiplicity of causes which cannot always be measured accurately. In other words, the science of statistics by its very nature is less precise than the natural sciences. It is science only in a limited sense, viz., as a specialized branch of knowledge. More appropriately, statistics may be regarded as a scientific method because it is really a tool which can be used in scientific studies. Wallis and Robert have rightly remarked the “Statistics in not a body of substantive knowledge but a body of methods for obtaining knowledge.”

If the science of knowledge, then art is action. Looking from this angle, Statistics may also be regarded as an art, In involves the application of given method to obtain facts, derive results; and finally to use them for appropriate action.