Descriptive Statistics

Statistics that describe features of a data set.

Wait. You want more? Really? Okay, but that’s pretty much it.

Calculations like mean, median, mode, standard deviation, interquartile range, linear regressions, r-values, r-squared-values, etc. are all kinds of descriptive statistics. Anytime we crunch the numbers in a data set to try to describe the location of special features of the data set (like the middle) or the shape or how spread out it is, we’re calculating descriptive statistics.