
With inferential statistics, often the survey starts with a hypothesis. Descriptive statistics look for similarities between all members of a population, while inferential statistics make assumptions about a population based on trends seen in the data. There are also two major types of statistics: descriptive and inferential. If you’re trying to pinpoint a link between certain regions and lung cancer prevalence, for instance, you would want to factor in features like smoking habits. Data collectors must also take variables into consideration, since results can be skewed by choosing participants who already have certain features in common. Statisticians can also use sampling, which allows them to take a subset of a larger population, choosing to assume that the sample represents the whole. Surveys are often in questionnaire form, with answers varying from multiple choice to open-ended. Before you can decide which statistical tool to use, you must first understand the data being collected.
