Descriptive vs. Inferential Statistics Descriptive vs. Inferential Statistics Recall from you introductory statistics course that there are two main categories of statistics.
Descriptive statistics do exactly that, they describe distrubutions of data.
Inferential statistics allow you to go beyond your samples and to make inferences about how samples relate to populations. In this course, you will need to know the characteristics and limits of both types of statistics. Descriptive Statistics One of the major uses of statistics is simply to describe quantities of data in simpler ways. Think of summary statistics of all sorts. For instance, knowing that a baseball player batted .301 last season is a summary of a large number of at-bats.