The Basics

What is Descriptive Statistics?

Descriptive statistics deals with answering questions about a certain set of data. "What does the data look like?" It communicates the gist of a set of data to a second party. Descriptive statistics enables someone to summarize data in a concise manner. It enables someone to describe the data without having to provide a lengthy explanation.

Mode

The mode in a list of numbers is the number that occurs most often, if such a number exists.

Median

The median of a list of numbers is found by ordering them from least to greatest. If the list has an odd number of numbers, the middle number in this ordering is the median. If there is an even number of numbers, the median is the sum of the two middle numbers, divided by 2. Note that there are always as many numbers greater than or equal to the median in the list as there are less than or equal to the median in the list.

Mean

The mean of a list of numbers is also called the numerical average. It is found by adding all the numbers in a list and dividing by the number of numbers in the list.