GUIDE; COMPLETE ACCURATE TERMS
WITH DETAILED, VERIFIED DEFINITIONS;
2025
Statistics - ANS-the science of collecting, organizing, presenting, analyzing, and interpreting numerical
data to assist in making more effective decisions
Descriptive Statistics - ANS-methods of organizing, summarizing, and presenting data in an informative
way.
Inferential Statistics - ANS-A decision, estimate, prediction, or generalization about a population, based
on a sample.
population - ANS-a collection of all possible individuals, objects, or measurements of interest.
sample - ANS-a portion, or part, of the population of interest
Qualitative or Attribute variable - ANS-the characteristic being studied is nonnumeric.
EXAMPLES: Gender, religious affiliation, type of automobile owned, state of birth, eye color are
examples.
Quantitative variable - ANS-information is reported numerically.
EXAMPLES: balance in your checking account,
minutes remaining in class, or number of children
Continuous variable - ANS-can assume any value within a specified range.
EXAMPLE: The pressure in a tire, the weight of a pork chop, professor income,
or the height of students in a class.
Discrete variables - ANS-can only assume certain values and there are usually "gaps" between values
EXAMPLE: the number of bedrooms in a house, or the number of hammers
sold at the local Home Depot (1,2,3,...,etc).