Statistics Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data.

It deals with all aspects of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.

Descriptive statistics Descriptive statistics is the discipline of quantitatively describing the main features of a collection of data, or the quantitative description itself. Descriptive statistics are distinguished from inferential statistics (or inductive statistics), in that descriptive statistics aim to summarize a sample, rather than use the data to learn about the population that the sample of data is thought to represent. This generally means that descriptive statistics, unlike inferential statistics, are not developed on the basis of probability theory.

Statistical inference Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions from data that is subject to random variation, for example, observational errors or sampling variation.

Statistical experiment A statistical experiment is a random or nondeterministic experiment. Its features are that: 1. each experiment is capable of being repeated indefinitely under essentially unchanged conditions. 2. Although we are in general not able to state what a particular outcome will be, we are able to describe the set of all possible outcomes of the experiment 3. As the experiment is performed repeatedly, the individual outcomes seem to occur in a haphazard manner. However as the experiment is repeated a large number of times, a definite pattern or regularity appears.

Sample In statistics and quantitative research methodology, a data sample is a set of data collected and/or selected from a statistical population by a defined procedure.