ABSTRACT
Descriptive statistics is an important part of the initial examination of data (IDA). It consists primarily of calculating summary statistics and constructing appropriate graphs and tables. It may well be regarded by the reader as the most familiar and easiest part of statistics. Thus the exercises in this section are intended to demonstrate that descriptive statistics is not always as easy as might be expected, particularly when data exhibit skewness and/or outliers. It is not always clear what summary statistics are worth calculating, and graphs and tables are often poorly presented.
