Introduction - Measurement as a means of representing reality

Statistics are always equivalent with handling numbers. These numbers are in almost every case understood as a representation of reality. This data is obtained by a process called measurement. At the beginning of every statistic is a question that needs to be answered.

		The elements of a sample are the carriers of characteristics.
How many male and how many female students are in the statistics seminar?		The characteristics of a sample become variables by defining their specific values.
Measurement is the process of assigning exactly one value that exactly defines the state of the carrier of a characteristic.		In our example we need only two different digits or a pair of characters.