Question

Choose the items that are Descriptive Statistics
[mark all correct answers]

a. Give likelihood of data occurring by chance
b. Summarize the data
c. Give a measure of statistical significance
d. Include the mean
e. Tell you whether to call your mother about your results

Answer 1

Descriptive statistics are ways of summarizing large sets of quantitative (numerical) information. If you have a large number of measurements, the best thing you can do is to make a graph with all the possible scores along the bottom (x axis), and the number of times you came across that score recorded vertically (y axis) in the form of a bar. But such a graph is just plain hard to do statistical analyses with, so we have other, more numerical ways of summarizing the data.

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/descstats.html