Descriptive statistics is a branch of statistics focused on summarizing and organizing data to describe its main features. This is achieved by using quantitative measures such as mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and variance, as well as graphical representations like histograms and box plots. The primary goal is to provide a quantitative summary of the sample data, rather than making inferences about the larger population from which the data was drawn.

A: This describes inferential statistics, which uses sample data to make generalizations or predictions about a larger population.

B: The term "categorically describe" is too restrictive. While descriptive statistics can be applied to categorical data (e.g., frequency counts), its core involves quantitative summarization.

D: This describes discrete variables, which are a type of data that can be analyzed using descriptive statistics, but it is not the definition of the statistical branch itself.

1. Databricks Documentation

summary function: The summary function in Databricks computes descriptive statistics for numeric and string columns. For numeric columns

it calculates count

mean

stddev

min

and max

which are all quantitative summaries. This aligns with the definition of using summary statistics to quantitatively describe data.

Source: Databricks Documentation > Spark SQL > DataFrame API > pyspark.sql.DataFrame.summary.

2. University Courseware

Penn State University STAT 200: "Descriptive statistics consists of methods for organizing and summarizing information... Numerical methods for summarizing data include calculating measures of center

such as the mean or median

and measures of spread

such as the standard deviation or interquartile range." This directly supports the concept of using quantitative measures to summarize data.

Source: Penn State University

Eberly College of Science

STAT 200: Elementary Statistics

Lesson 1.1: "What is Statistics?".

3. University Courseware

MIT OpenCourseWare: "Descriptive statistics: describing data with graphs and numerical summaries." This definition emphasizes the use of numerical (quantitative) methods to describe the data.

Source: MIT OpenCourseWare

18.05 Introduction to Probability and Statistics

Spring 2014

Topic 1: "Introduction to Statistics".