[Ezra Halleck]

Briefly describe the areas of statistics: descriptive and inferential.

[Chana Max, RN]

descriptive statistics just displays data
while inferential statistics uses the data to come to conclusions about certain things.

[Ezra Halleck]

I think you got the gist of what I am asking. However, descriptive statistics is not just the display of the data. It is also an analysis of the data, including the calculation of several statistics.

Inferential will take this analysis and try to come to some conclusions or make predictions of future events.

I will illustrate how the 2 sides of statistics work together with the example would of weather. The data would be the various statistics associated with weather, such as temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, relative humidity for a locale plus all such data upwind of a locale as well. Descriptive statistics would be a present weather map showing any storms and wind patterns and weather and radar maps. Inferential would be the predicted weather maps for the next several days as well as predictions of high and low temperatures and precipitation for a location. The accuracy of such predictions of course decreases as the length of time into the future increases.

[Caroline Carreño]

Descriptive statistics is data of what something IS whereas inferential statistics is data of what something COULD be.