Descriptive And Inferential Statistics Finance Assignment (Essay Sample)

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Professor’s Name
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Institution
Descriptive and Inferential Statistics
In Criminal Justice, the study of statistics can be categorized into several branches. There are however two main branches within which all statistical data may be characterized depending on certain specifications. The two main branches are descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Both descriptive and inferential statistics provide useful insights into the nature and interpretation the data that is collected. Individually, they are not as helpful but when used together, they forge a powerful instrument that is integral for description and prediction data. Typically, both descriptive an inferential statistics are used on a regular basis in most of our work and social environments even without our awareness.
Like the term suggests, descriptive statistics refer to a set of data that describes or defines the population or subject in a certain manner. These designations that come about as a result descriptive statistics usually give crucial descriptions that more often than not, reveal immediate patterns or consistent trends identifiable with the subject of study. Descriptive statistics are however limited in the sense that they do not allow users to make inferences or conclusions beyond what is already observed. They simply describe the data tabled and additional information is then required to compliment descriptive data in order to qualify the hypothesis or theories that have been drawn. Descriptive data is important because it is rather difficult to ascertain the meaning of raw data if you cannot interpret what it means or represents. An example of descriptive data is that if 100g of narcotics enter the U.S. daily and 40g of that is cocaine, the descriptive data in this case would be that 40% of narcotics entering the U.S. daily is cocaine.
Inferential data on the other hand denotes the set of data that draws extrapolations or interpretations from a certain already collected data using information that has already otherwise been collected. Rather than collect voluminous information, the statician will simply collect data from a designated section to represent the entire population as a sample. The data collected from the sample is then interpreted to reflect the circumstances of the entire population. The sample that represents the population can be large or small depending on the needs of the researcher. The key component is that the sample of the population must contain information consistent with the entire population that is in study. Inferential statistics are particularly useful where the researcher does not have access to the entire population or where it would be unreasonably expensive and inconvenient to access the ...