There were two widely divergent influences on the early development of statistical methods
Descriptive statistics involves tabulating, depicting, and describing collections of data. These data may be either quantitative, such as measures of height, intelligence, or grade level—variables that are characterized by an underlying continuum or the data may represent qualitative variable, such as sex, college major, or personality type.
Large masses of data must generally undergo a process of summarization or reduction before they are comprehensible. Descriptive statistics is tool for describing or summarizing or reducing to comprehensible form. the properties of an otherwise unwieldy mass of data.
Inferential statistics is a formalized body of methods for solving another class of problems that present great difficulties for the unaided human mind. This general class of problems characteristically involves attempts to make predictions using a sample of observations. For example, a school superintendent wishes to determine the proportion of children in a large school system who come to school without breakfast, have been vaccinated for flu, or whatever. Having a little knowledge of statistics, the superintendent would know that it is unnecessary and inefficient to question each child; the proportion for the entire district could be estimated fairly accurately from a sample of as few as 100 children. Thus, the purpose of inferential statistics is to predict or estimate characteristics of a population from knowledge of the characteristics of only a sample of the population.
Which of the following are counting and describing associated with?
A.Descriptive statistics
B.Unknown variables
C.Qualitative changes
D.Inferential statistics