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Descriptive statistics deals with the presentation and collection of data.

This is
usually the first part of a statistical analysis. It is usually not as simple as it
sounds, and the statistician needs to be aware of designing experiments, choosing
the right focus group and avoid biases that are so easy to creep into the
experiment.

Inferential Statistics
Inferential statistics, as the name suggests, involves drawing the right
conclusions from the statistical analysis that has been performed using descriptive
statistics. In the end, it is the inferences that make studies important and this
aspect is dealt with in inferential statistics.

Most predictions of the future and generalizations about a population by studying a


smaller sample come under the purview of inferential statistics. Most social
sciences experiments deal with studying a small sample population that helps
determine how the population in general behaves. By designing the right experiment,
the researcher is able to draw conclusions relevant to his study.

While drawing conclusions, one needs to be very careful so as not to draw the wrong
or biased conclusions. Even though this appears like a science, there are ways in
which one can manipulate studies and results through various means. For example,
data dredging is increasingly becoming a problem as computers hold loads of
information and it is easy, either intentionally or unintentionally, to use the
wrong inferential methods.

Both descriptive and inferential statistics go hand in hand and one cannot exist
without the other. Good scientific methodology needs to be followed in both these
steps of statistical analysis and both these branches of statistics are equally
important for a researcher.

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The field of statistics is divided into two major divisions: descriptive and
inferential. Each of these segments is important, offering different techniques
that accomplish different objectives. Descriptive statistics describe what is going
on in a population or data set. Inferential statistics, by contrast, allow
scientists to take findings from a sample group and generalize them to a larger
population. The two types of statistics have some important differences.

Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics is the type of statistics that probably springs to most
people’s minds when they hear the word “statistics.” In this branch of statistics,
the goal is to describe. Numerical measures are used to tell about features of a
set of data. There are a number of items that belong in this portion of statistics,
such as:

These measures are important and useful because they allow scientists to see
patterns among data, and thus to make sense of that data. Descriptive statistics
can only be used to describe the population or data set under study: The results
cannot be generalized to any other group or population.

Inferential Statistics
Inferential statistics are produced through complex mathematical calculations that
allow scientists to infer trends about a larger population based on a study of a
sample taken from it. Scientists use inferential statistics to examine the
relationships between variables within a sample and then make generalizations or
predictions about how those variables will relate to a larger population.
It is usually impossible to examine each member of the population individually. So
scientists choose a representative subset of the population, called a statistical
sample, and from this analysis, they are able to say something about the population
from which the sample came..

Descriptive vs. Inferential Statistics


Although descriptive statistics is helpful in learning things such as the spread
and center of the data, nothing in descriptive statistics can be used to make any
generalizations. In descriptive statistics, measurements such as the mean and
standard deviation are stated as exact numbers.

Even though inferential statistics uses some similar calculations — such as the
mean and standard deviation — the focus is different for inferential statistics.
Inferential statistics start with a sample and then generalizes to a population.
This information about a population is not stated as a number. Instead, scientists
express these parameters as a range of potential numbers, along with a degree of
confidence.

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here are many contexts in which to answer this question. A common and useful one:

Descriptive statistics encompasses the summarizing of data already collected —


calculating means, medians, standard deviations, etc., and plotting the data in a
way that helps others understand what is going on.
Inferential statistics encompasses drawing tentative conclusions (hypotheses) about
entire populations (too big to sample) from data sampled from those populations.
Its methods include hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and dozens more.

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Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics give information that describes the data in some manner. For
example, suppose a pet shop sells cats, dogs, birds and fish. If 100 pets are sold,
and 40 out of the 100 were dogs, then one description of the data on the pets sold
would be that 40% were dogs.

This same pet shop may conduct a study on the number of fish sold each day for one
month and determine that an average of 10 fish were sold each day. The average is
an example of descriptive statistics.

Some other measurements in descriptive statistics answer questions such as 'How


widely dispersed is this data?', 'Are there a lot of different values?' or 'Are
many of the values the same?', 'What value is in the middle of this data?', 'Where
does a particular data value stand with respect with the other values in the data
set?'

A graphical representation of data is another method of descriptive statistics.


Examples of this visual representation are histograms, bar graphs and pie graphs,
to name a few. Using these methods, the data is described by compiling it into a
graph, table or other visual representation.

This provides a quick method to make comparisons between different data sets and to
spot the smallest and largest values and trends or changes over a period of time.
If the pet shop owner wanted to know what type of pet was purchased most in the
summer, a graph might be a good medium to compare the number of each type of pet
sold and the months of the year.

Inferential Statistics
Now, suppose you need to collect data on a very large population. For example,
suppose you want to know the average height of all the men in a city with a
population of so many million residents. It isn't very practical to try and get the
height of each man.

This is where inferential statistics comes into play. Inferential statistics makes
inferences about populations using data drawn from the population. Instead of using
the entire population to gather the data, the statistician will collect a sample or
samples from the millions of residents and make inferences about the entire
population using the sample.

The sample is a set of data taken from the population to represent the population.
Probability distributions, hypothesis testing, correlation testing and regression
analysis all fall under the category of inferential statistics.

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