Legal Research

Legal research and legal statistics are invaluable tools to understanding the legal system and the world that we live in. Legal research is known as the process of finding and analyzing data and information that is vital to assist and support legal decision-making. Though the specifics of the process involved in legal research differs from person to person, law firm to law firm, and country to country, the basic steps remain the same. First the individual carrying out the legal research will locate primary law sources, such as regulations or previous cases that is relative to the information he/she is trying to collect. After the primary sources have been identified and reviewed secondary sources will be consulted, such as law reviews and legal dictionaries and encyclopedias. Secondary sources will help to provide some background information on the topic that the individual is researching. After the secondary sources have been consulted the individual carrying out the legal research may choose to seek other supporting information in outside sources. Websites such as Westlaw.com assists in legal research by providing easy access to public records so that it is more convenient to track down people and their contacts as well as patent history information. Though convenient for legal research, these websites and computer programs often cost money. The Internet law library provides valuable information for individuals who are doing legal research and provides access to the findings of other individuals’ research.

The topic that is most often associated with legal statistics is that of immigration. Immigration occurs when people move from their place of birth into a new habitat. An example of this includes when thousands of Irish immigrated to the United States during the Great Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852. People from Mexico illegally immigrate to the United States on a daily basis in search of a better life for themselves and their family. North America has over 4.1 million immigrants, while Britain has the largest number of immigrants, with 70.6 million people immigrating into Britain in 2005. Legal statistics often goes hand in hand with crime statistics. These statistics are very important when researching background information for legal cases. After conducting a lot of research the legal statistics on child abuse shows that in 2007 approximately 794,000 children were victims of neglect and abuse. The highest rate of abuse occurred in the victims with ages ranging from birth to one year. Girls made up more than half of the child victims. About one half of the victims were white. These statistics provide an interesting, but scary image of child abuse in the United States. Legal statistics provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows that in 2008 13,690 law enforcement agencies had collected data related to hate crime. 2,145 of these agencies reported a total of 7,783 hate crimes. The legal statistics show that of these hate crimes 1.3% were racially motivated, 19.5% were caused by religious bias, 11.5% were based on ethnicity bias and 16.7% were because of the victims sexual orientation. This information becomes important for lawyers and law students as background information when working on cases that involves similar information or motives.

Averages

Stats and averages are tools used in descriptive statistics. Stats and averages can provide an illustration of a specific individual, corporation, or team that may otherwise be overlooked. It may seem to be something that is irrelevant to everyday life, however, stats and averages are important in all areas of life. Stats and averages are important to understanding the past present and future. Stats and averages can inform you about the success or failure of a certain athlete. For instance, calculating a player’s batting average allows the success of baseball players to be quantified and ranked. The number one batting average in history belongs to Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers. He had a batting average of.366 which is still yet to be topped.

The success of a company and specific stores within that company can by summarized using averages and stats. What was the average number of transactions of all of the stores in the country? How much money was made as compared to how much was lost due to theft and damages? By quantifying this type of data a company is able to see what areas the are succeeding in and what areas they are lacking in and make required changes. How can you quantify how smart an individual is? Averages and stats are often used to describe a persons intelligence. For example, colleges select individuals based on their grade point average and their test scores. a person’s grade point average is calculated by averaging together their grades from all of the classes that they have taken. Planning to take a trip to Portland, Oregon this November? Well, you better check out the averages and stats for the state of Oregon before you travel. It is important to know that the average temperature for Portland, Oregon in November is 46 degrees Fahrenheit and that there is an average rain accumulation of 5.3 inches. Pack accordingly!

Averages and stats have become so integrated into our daily lives that people often overlook the importance of them. Averages and stats are important when deciding a target audience for a product. If the primary consumer of a product is teenage girls, than more money is going to be spent marketing to teenage girls than marketing to other audiences such as older males. There are three types of averages that play an important role in day to day activity. They are the mean, the median, and the mode. The mean is the average of the sample, or the sum of all of the numbers divided by the amount of numbers in the sample. The median is the number directly in the center of the higher group of numbers and the smaller group of numbers when the sample is listed in ascending or descending numerical value. The mode is the number that is present the most amount of times in a sample. Using the mean, median and mode one can obtain an illustration about the data they are analyzing, which becomes important in all areas of business, mathematics, and life.

Statistics

Probability and statistics are severely underrated branches of mathematics. Probability and statistics go hand in hand. Probability is greatly incorporated into statistics and understanding it is essential to the study of statistics. Probability and statistics allows people to calculate the chance that an event will occur. By calculating the times an event is likely to occur, you are also calculating the times that the event will not occur. For instance, if you flip a coin the probability that the coin will land with the head up 1:2 (50%). Likewise, the probability that the coin will land with the head not up is also 1:2. If the coin is flipped nine times the probability that the coin will land heads up will remain 1:2. This is because each of these events is a separate event that does not effect the other. Probability and statistics are important topics not only in school but essential in everyday life. The various types of people that make up the world in which we live can be represented using probability. Probability and statistics are essential to understanding the world in which we live in.

Few people recognize the importance of statistics and probability. Statistics and probability becomes important in all areas of expertise including law, health, business, etc. If event A and event B are mutually exclusive it means that they can not happen at the same time. It allows individuals to discover whether events are correlated and related or whether events are mutually exclusive. For instance when one is examining different illnesses it is important to see if you can figure out if there is and action that may be related to the cause of illness. For instance, probability and statistics can be used to determine how many of the individuals diagnosed with lung cancer were smokers. Probability can be used to illustrate the sex of violent crime offenders by showing how many of the individuals that were charged with violent crimes were men instead of women.

The set of methods used to collect and analyze data is known as statistics and probability is simply the chance that an event will occur, or the chance that an event will not occur.

Statistics and probability is a process of problem solving that becomes easier with practice. Statistics and probability are very important to anthropologists, meteorologists and baseball players. Probability is used to calculate batting averages for baseball players. When calculating a players batting average you are trying to find out how likely it is that that player will get a hit. A baseball batting average is a ratio of hits to times at bat. What is the chance that it is going to snow tomorrow and we will not have work? Meteorologists must use probability to figure this out. Statistics and probability are used to illustrate the different races, genders, and ethnicities that make up the United States. Statistics and probability are one branch of mathematics that is useful outside of the classroom in everyday life.