======Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics====== =====Descriptive statistics===== * Definition: Descriptive statistics refers to statistical methods used to organize, summarize, and simplify data,focusing on **describing the overall picture of a set of data** and characterizing the properties of something. * Common descriptive statistics methods include calculating **mean** and **standard deviation**. * Descriptive statistics often use **graphs and tables** to dscribe statistics. ---- =====Inferential statistics===== * Definition: Inferential statistics refers to the use of a series of mathematical methods to generalize the **results obtained from sample data** to the population where the sample is located. * Due to limitations in practical conditions, it may not be possible to examine each individual in the population one by one in actual research, only **representative samples** can be used to infer the overall situation of the population. * The key to conducting inferential statistics is to extract samples that are **as close as possible to the population** being studied, in order to minimize the **sampling error**.