Overall, professor salaries barely budged during past year, the Chronicle says, noting that on average, salaries for full-time faculty rose 1.8% in the 2011-12 school year, while inflation was 3%. Tuition, meanwhile, has increased dramatically.
Inferential Statistics. Inferential statistics is concerned with making predictions or inferences about a population from observations and analyses of a sample. That is, we can take the results of an analysis using a sample and can generalize it to the larger population that the sample represents.
The mathematical procedures whereby we convert information about the sample into intelligent guesses about the population fall under the rubric of inferential statistics. A sample is typically a small subset of the population. In the case of voting attitudes, we would sample a few thousand Americans drawn from the hundreds of millions that make up the country. In choosing a sample, it is therefore crucial that it not over-represent one kind of citizen at the expense of others.