What are descriptive statistics?

What are descriptive statistics?

• A. Describing someone in quantitative terms
• B. Explaining causes of events
• C. Predicting outcomes
• D. Measuring qualitative traits

Answer: (A)

Descriptive statistics are about summarizing and describing data with numbers so you can see what the dataset looks like. They provide simple, concrete summaries—like averages, percentages, counts, and measures of spread (range, standard deviation)—that describe the observed values in a group. This is why describing someone in quantitative terms fits: you might report a person’s age, height, or how many drinkers fall into a certain category, all in numeric form. Descriptive statistics don’t try to explain why something happened or predict what will happen next; they just summarize what’s in the data you have.

Descriptive statistics are about summarizing and describing data with numbers so you can see what the dataset looks like. They provide simple, concrete summaries—like averages, percentages, counts, and measures of spread (range, standard deviation)—that describe the observed values in a group. This is why describing someone in quantitative terms fits: you might report a person’s age, height, or how many drinkers fall into a certain category, all in numeric form. Descriptive statistics don’t try to explain why something happened or predict what will happen next; they just summarize what’s in the data you have.