Descriptive and Inferential Statistics

Descriptive statistics- concerns on dealing with the methods of organising, summarising and presenting data in a convinient and informative way. The data are usually presented in tabular, graphical or numerical ( tables, histogram, ogive, bar charts, pie charts, percentage)

On the other hand, Inferential Statistics - concerns to drawing conclusion/ inference about a characteristic of a population- If you would like to know if mans are stronger than woman, then you would probability organize a competition, collect the data on their scores and check the hypothesis that you have assumed. If you come up with an hypothesis stating man are better than woman then you have to perform Inferential statistics to test your hypothesis whether or not its true and if there is sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis.

Introduction Statistics

Statistics is a study of collecting, organizing, analysing and interpreting data in order to determine if an assumption or hypothesis is valid. The valididty of the data collected can be investigated using the statistical test and tools.

The first impression on has on statistics is HARD!. In real, statistics is actually interesting. It is easy to conclude if one test has proven effect towards the variable you are investigating but how accurate your assumptions are can only be answered by statistical analysis.

For instance, If I have found a new medicine that is able to cure a disease, I would choose to try it on a mice first before I can be assure its going to be effective in humans. So in that case I will be performing a research on mice to see their respond towards the drug that I have found. The data I collect from this may seem to look effective to my perception but I need to prove with eveidence IT IS EFFECTIVE and this could only be done by me analysing my data statistically. So now do you see the need to learn Statistics.