ABSTRACT
Statistics largely fall into descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics summarizes the data, providing descriptions of certain characteristics of a given data. For instance, suppose one has the scores on a standardized test for 500 participants. One way to summarize the data is to calculate an average score, which is a descriptive statistic that indicates how the typical individual scored. The purpose of correlational statistics is to describe the relationship between two or more variables for one group of participants. Inferential statistics takes descriptive statistics further by extending the results from a sample to the population that the sample represents. Thus, inferential statistics are tools that tell us how much confidence we can have when generalizing results from a sample to a population. The pollster first calculates descriptive statistics, such as the percentage of respondents in favor of capital punishment and the percentage opposed. A margin of error is an inferential statistic.
