Descriptive vs. Inferential Statistics

In this section, we learned about how Inferential Statistics differs from Descriptive Statistics .

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Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics is about describing our collected data using the measures discussed throughout this lesson: measures of center, measures of spread, shape of our distribution, and outliers. We can also use plots of our data to gain a better understanding.

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Inferential Statistics

Inferential Statistics is about using our collected data to draw conclusions to a larger population . Performing inferential statistics well requires that we take a sample that accurately represents our population of interest.

A common way to collect data is via a survey. However, surveys may be extremely biased depending on the types of questions that are asked, and the way the questions are asked. This is a topic you should think about when tackling the the first project.

We looked at specific examples that allowed us to identify the

1. Population - our entire group of interest.
2. Parameter - numeric summary about a population
3. Sample - subset of the population
4. Statistic numeric summary about a sample

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