Statistics is the unseen force driving everything from life-saving drug development to understanding climate change impacts in Nigeria, the Rector of Yaba College of Technology, Dr Ibraheem Abdul, said on Thursday.
Abdul made the remark at the 18th Inaugural Lecture of the institution on Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the inaugural lecture had the theme: “Unlocking Insights: The Power of Statistics in Today’s Data – Driven World”.
The rector said statistics had been a key driver to innovation because it provided guidance in evidence-based decision-making and policy formulation.
Abdul noted that in today’s data driven world, it had been shown that statistics was not just a technical discipline but a powerful tool used to unlock insights and shape the future.
The rector asserted that by transforming raw data into meaningful knowledge, statistics could empower them to address global challenges, to innovate across industries and to improve the quality of life in general.
“The inaugural lecturer of today was able to show to us that we all need statistics in all aspects of our lives, and encouraged us to embrace the use of statistics, whatever our area is.
“However, choosing a statistical technique or tool to use in statistics has become a major problem, especially to individuals that are not well grounded in the field of statistics.
“It is important to state that the users of statistics need to keep abreast with quite a number of facts to correctly decide which statistical technique to use for any particular data in terms of analysis.
“Proven by our inaugural lecturer of today, statistics is now a cornerstone of every scientific inquiry, even in the fields of medicine, engineering, science, social sciences, we all rely heavily on statistical phenomena,” he said
Delivering the lecture, Dr Olusesan Olufolabo, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Statistics, Yabatech, provided an assessment of the relative importance of factors associated with neonatal and post-neonatal mortality in Nigeria.
Olufolabo said he was able to establish the association between health, infant mortality, and some major demographic, socio-economic and health care variables.
He said that according to data on reproductive health histories of over 8,000 women between age 15-49, the study had shown that high infant mortality was experienced by children born to mothers who were uneducated and mothers who lived in rural areas.
The don stated that the study had also shown that breastfeeding was one of the important correlates of mortality, and cessation of breastfeeding increased the risk of mortality significantly during the first year of life.
According to him, as a result of this, a national policy and advocacy on exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life of a child was made from the study, propagated and sponsored by UNICEF.
He charged the institution to do more in the area of scientific studies, especially in the use of statistical concepts, encouraging the college to include statisticians in all observational and experimental studies right from the value stage.
Olufolabo recommended that the college should have a laboratory for interdisciplinary statistical analysis, and that the laboratory should be situated in the department of statistics.
The don encouraged Yabatech management to have an experienced statistician in the academic planning unit, and not just someone from the department of statistics.
He also reminded the management of the college that there could be no planning without statistics.
