Statistics: Overview
Statistics: Graphic Displays
For many people, statistics means numbers—numerical facts, figures, or information. Reports of industry production, baseball batting averages, government deficits, and so forth, are often called statistics. To be precise, these numbers are descriptive statistics because they are numerical data that describe phenomena. Descriptive statistics are as simple as the number of children in each family along a city block or as complex as the annual report released from the U.S. Treasury Department.
Consider two ways of representing descriptive statistics: numerical and pictorial.
Numerical statistics
Numerical statistics are numbers, but clearly, some numbers are more meaningful than others. For example, if you are offered a purchase price of $1 for an automobile on the condition that you also buy a second automobile, the price of the second automobile would be a major consideration (its price could be $1,000,000 or only $1,000), and thus, the average—or mean—of the two prices would be the important statistic.
Pictorial statistics
Taking numerical data and presenting it in pictures or graphs is what is known as pictorial statistics. Showing data in the form of a graphic can make complex and confusing information appear more simple and straightforward.
