ABSTRACT
Statistical inference methods and, more broadly, statistical analysis methods form a huge collection of formal analytical and graphical tools for dealing with empirical data. In a broad sense all of these methods have been constructed for the purpose of extracting information from data. There exists, however, certain differences between them related to the situations where they are used. There are at least three main classes of methods, namely,
1. methods used as tools for making decisions, the results of which are actions in the real world,
2. methods used to update beliefs about some phenomenon based on observations on that same phenomenon, and
3. methods to find out what explanations or theories about the phenomenon, which is under investigation, are supported by the empirical data.
