Understanding descriptive statistics and their variability is a fundamental aspect of statistical analysis. On their own, descriptive statistics tell us how frequently an observation occurs, what is considered average, and how far data in our sample deviate from being average. With descriptive statistics, we are able to provide a summary of characteristics from both large and small datasets. In addition to the valuable information they provide on their own, measures of central tendency and variability become important components in many of the statistical tests that we will cover. Therefore, we can think about central tendency and variability as the cornerstone to the quantitative structure we are building.
