Basic types of statistics

Understanding statistics is important, both because statistics are necessary for the analysis of quantitative data and because you need to understand statistics in order to read the research literature critically. Two general classes of statistical techniques are descriptive and inferential statistics.

Identify the type of descriptive statistics that matches each of the examples in the following table.

ExampleType of Descriptive StatisticsBryan is interested in whether the relationship between abductor and abductee is related to the outcome of the kidnapping. She identifies the percentage of child abductions in the United States that are committed by family members, strangers, and known acquaintances and relates these relationships to whether the kidnapping resulted in return of the child unharmed, return of the child harmed, child found dead, or child never found. Keshia is interested in whether people see a role for government in reducing childhood obesity. She identifies the percentage of the U.S. population that believes the government should take a role in combating obesity and the percentage that does not. Coby is interested in whether people see a role for government in reducing childhood obesity. He identifies people's political party affiliation, their obesity status, and whether they believe that the government should take a role in combating the obesity epidemic.

What is ithe process of using a few numbers to summarize many called?

Inferential statistics

Data reduction

Read the scenario, and answer the questions that follow.

An anthropology student is very nervous about taking statistics. She is interested in finding out the statistics anxiety levels of fellow anthropology students at her university.

She selects 50 students from the 500 anthropology majors at her university and asks them about their level of anxiety regarding statistics.

The set of 500 anthropology majors at her university is the , and the set of 50 students is the .

Inferential statistics involves using information from to make inferences about .