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Descriptive and Inferential Statistics

Descriptive statistics is used to describe and summarize data without making inferences beyond the data set. It involves calculating parameters like the mean, median, and mode from a population of data. Descriptive statistics can be used to analyze large data sets by finding measures of central tendency and spread, such as the average and variance. It presents data in a meaningful way through tables, graphs, and commentary to help identify patterns. Inferential statistics allows for conclusions to be drawn about a broader population based on a sample data set.

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53 views2 pages

Descriptive and Inferential Statistics

Descriptive statistics is used to describe and summarize data without making inferences beyond the data set. It involves calculating parameters like the mean, median, and mode from a population of data. Descriptive statistics can be used to analyze large data sets by finding measures of central tendency and spread, such as the average and variance. It presents data in a meaningful way through tables, graphs, and commentary to help identify patterns. Inferential statistics allows for conclusions to be drawn about a broader population based on a sample data set.

Uploaded by

NatalyRuizCortez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Statistics

What is Descriptive Statistics?

When put in its simplest terms, descriptive statistics is pretty easy to


understand. Descriptive statistics helps you describe and summarize the
data that you have set out before you. You can, make conclusions with that
data. When you make these conclusions, they are called parameters. This is
a lot different than conclusions made with inferential statistics, which are
called statistics.

Descriptive statistics involves all of the data from a given set, which is also
known as a population. With this form of statistics, you dont make any
conclusions beyond what youre given in the set of data. For example, if you
have a data set that involves 20 students in class, you can find the average
of that data set for those 20 students, but you cant find what the possible
average is for all the students in the school using just that data.

Within descriptive statistics there are two key types, and in those types you
will find the different forms of measurements that you will perform with the
data that you have.

Descriptive statistics has a lot of variations, and its all used to help make
sense of raw data. Without descriptive statistics the data that we have
would be hard to summarize, especially when it is on the large side. Imagine
finding the mean or the average of hundreds of thousands of numbers for
statistical analysis.

There are simpler ways to do descriptive statistics, such as with computer


software. The Udemy course Descriptive Statistics in SPSS is a great tool to
help you with descriptive statistics for incredibly large amounts.

Descriptive and Inferential Statistics


When analysing data, such as the marks achieved by 100 students for a
piece of coursework, it is possible to use both descriptive and inferential
statistics in your analysis of their marks. Typically, in most research
conducted on groups of people, you will use both descriptive and inferential
statistics to analyse your results and draw conclusions. So what are
descriptive and inferential statistics? And what are their differences?
Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive statistics is the term given to the analysis of data that helps
describe, show or summarize data in a meaningful way such that, for

example, patterns might emerge from the data. Descriptive statistics do not,
however, allow us to make conclusions beyond the data we have analysed
or reach conclusions regarding any hypotheses we might have made. They
are simply a way to describe our data.

Descriptive statistics are very important because if we simply presented our


raw data it would be hard to visulize what the data was showing, especially
if there was a lot of it. Descriptive statistics therefore enables us to present
the data in a more meaningful way, which allows simpler interpretation of
the data. For example, if we had the results of 100 pieces of students'
coursework, we may be interested in the overall performance of those
students. We would also be interested in the distribution or spread of the
marks. Descriptive statistics allow us to do this. How to properly describe
data through statistics and graphs is an important topic and discussed in
other Laerd Statistics guides. Typically, there are two general types of
statistic that are used to describe data:

Measures of central tendency: these are ways of describing the central


position of a frequency distribution for a group of data. In this case, the
frequency distribution is simply the distribution and pattern of marks scored
by the 100 students from the lowest to the highest. We can describe this
central position using a number of statistics, including the mode, median,
and mean. You can read about measures of central tendency here.

Measures of spread: these are ways of summarizing a group of data by


describing how spread out the scores are. For example, the mean score of
our 100 students may be 65 out of 100. However, not all students will have
scored 65 marks. Rather, their scores will be spread out. Some will be lower
and others higher. Measures of spread help us to summarize how spread out
these scores are. To describe this spread, a number of statistics are
available to us, including the range, quartiles, absolute deviation, variance
and standard deviation.
When we use descriptive statistics it is useful to summarize our group of
data using a combination of tabulated description (i.e., tables), graphical
description (i.e., graphs and charts) and statistical commentary (i.e., a
discussion of the results)

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